Showdown
by CaptainZoom
Summary: Sheppard and the Atlantis expedition are forced to face a determined adversary who will not relent until a matter of vengeance, and of honourable redemption, has been resolved [S.2]
1. Prologue

**Stargate Atlantis: Showdown**

**PROLOGUE**

_The planet Harken, somewhere in the  
Pegasus Galaxy._

The force of Genii deployed to the planet, known as Harken, was substantial, numbering at over 200 soldiers and 40 logistical personnel of various fields of expertise. Commander Adair Cormac was one of the very first to emerge planet-side, with the first wave of his men.

He stood proudly on the stone pedestal on which the Gate of the Ancestors was perched, and watched as the Genii troops under his own direct command fan out across the vast grasslands stretching out before them in all directions.

He was a seasoned leader of men, though more politically attuned than a military field-commander. But Adair had been given this important task by Cowen himself, a man that the Commander revered and respected for his driving vision in their peoples' epic struggle against the Wraith.

Adair also knew that Cowen trusted him, relied on his support, so this was a way for him to get in the good graces of one of the Grand Masters of the Genii Combined Forces.

Always thinking and strategising, was Adair Cormac. He had great dreams, vast ambitions, and was not about to be stopped by anyone or anything.

But this operation, to track down _just one man_…

It seemed like an incredible waste of Genii resources and personnel to Cormac, but then he was not one to question the valid nature of such orders. He was tasked with an objective, and he was to carry it out without question and without fail. Simple enough, really, and Adair hardly cared to question these orders regardless.

Acastus Kolya was a very dangerous man, skilled in a wide variety of modes of death and destruction, and one of the most lethal commandos the Genii had ever turned out.

He had escaped from the High Council's clutches when word reached him from a sympathetic member of their plans to have him 'dispatched', and Kolya had managed to kill his would-be assassins and escape through the Stargate before anyone realised it hadn't gone to plan.

Now, word had reached the Genii High Council from a source amongst the Harken that Acastus was amongst their people, so the task force had been assembled and Commander Cormac given his objectives.

The former Commander of great prestige among the Genii was to be brought back to the homeworld as a prisoner, to be tortured for his insolence and then put to death at the discretion of Grand Master Cowen himself. Anyone who got in the way of the Genii task force was to be dispatched without hesitation. Those were the type of clear-cut, concise orders Adair respected.

What happened next, as the Commander stepped down off the stone pedestal and started striding across the grassland towards his two senior subordinates, was nothing short of unbelievable.

Kolya, the man they had all come to scour the planet if need be to track down and apprehend, _came striding out of the tree-line off to the left of Adair's position and started walking towards him at a leisurely pace!_

It was one of the most incredulous sights Commander Cormac had ever seen. He was struck dumb by the sight of the man striding towards him, the flaps of Acastus' simple peasant's cloak slapping together as he strode purposefully across the grassy plain, his hands hanging down by his sides, palms opened, no obvious weapon in sight…

Every single Genii soldier who could see Kolya approaching, however, did not have to be told to take the most extreme precautions when dealing with the dangerous man – they all kept their guns raised on him as he moved closer, their fingers resting lightly on the triggers ready to pull back just a fraction further in an instant.

This made the flustered Commander feel a little bit more in control, considering the strangely precarious situation. But he could still feel the beads of sweat running down the sides of his face, and streaks sliding slowly down his back. Adair could not stop the fear gnawing at his stomach, as the Genii legend made his way closer, Kolya's head raised high and his eyes blazing with an inner drive that chilled the other man to the very bone.

"Well then, it seems you've saved all of us a great deal of time by presenting yourself to this task force, Kolya, and for that I honour you." Adair leered sarcastically, not even bothering to conceal his contempt for the seasoned warrior. Kolya did nothing, just came to a stop about twenty-five yards away from Commander Cormac and kept his hands down by his sides, his head slightly bowed. "Now, why are you here handing yourself over, Kolya? Hoping to plead your case before the High Council? Somehow, I cannot imagine Cowen would allow this…"

"I'm not going back home, Adair…" Acastus replied coldly. "At least, not yet. And the reason I've presented myself to you is quite simple, really – it's so I can shoot you dead right now!"

And with that, Kolya moved into fluid action, reaching up with his right hand to pull a Genii standard issue auto-pistol out of his tunic. He raised the gun up in one quick action and, before he could even make a move to draw his own weapon or escape, Commander Cormac found himself staring down the barrel of a deadly pistol pointed right at his head.

The look on the old Commander's face was truly murderous. There was no compassion there for the man who had been sent to bring him in, no room in Kolya's heart for caring for the man he had dead to rights in his gun's crosshairs.

Adair offered up a quick prayer to the Ancestors. He was still muttering the first hurried verse when the bullet struck, smashing right into his temple, straight between his eyes…

The Genii Commander sagged back onto the ground where he'd been standing, quite dead, the huge gaping hole in his skull still smouldering from the gunshot wound that felled him.

# A #

None of the Genii reacted at first. The two officers who had been marching over to Kolya and Cormac froze in mid-stride. The man on the left, the Group Leader, was one of Adair's backers – Kolya watched him closely, though he made no obvious sign of this fact.

Acastus Kolya lowered his still-smoking pistol and glanced around at all the Genii troopers arrayed before him. Every single one of them had weapons levelled at him, bar the two officers, but no one was firing despite the fact that he had just killed their commanding officer, Adair, right before their very eyes.

The Group Leader was the first one to snap out of the comatose state that had befallen the entire task force. He reached down for his sidearm.

"Why aren't you all SHOOTING, men? This traitor's just killed a Genii Commander!" the Group Leader yelled out at the top of his lungs, lifting his auto-pistol from up out of his gun-holster. He did not know that this was a fatal move to make… and he never would know.

No one else made a move, nor fired a shot at Kolya. Though over almost the entire complement of Genii could have, if they only squeezed back on their triggers just a little bit.

The Group Leader did not move nearly as fast as Acastus himself did, when the veteran chose to make his move. The Genii warrior snapped around on the balls of his feet and had his gun back up in a flash, a seemingly inhuman blur of motion, and fired four shots in rapid-fire succession that all found their marks perfectly.

His target, the Genii Group Leader, sent staggering back off his feet, dropping quickly to the ground after taking a couple of unsteady steps backwards. The man was dead before he hit the ground.

For a few long moments, silence reigned. Then the Sub-Leader moved forward, stepping over the smouldering body of his superior with barely a look at the gore-splattered corpse. He moved up to the well renowned and respected former Genii military leader, and saluted the man with crisp precision. Kolya returned the salute promptly, then they both shook hands.

"Sir, it is a true honour to assist you in this expedition," the Sub-Leader, Egan, stated with low, sincere earnest. He was the brother of one of the Genii soldiers killed in the failed operation to take the Ancient city of Atlantis.

"I thank you and your troopers for your allegiance, Egan, and vow to you all right here and now that your faith in me will not go unrewarded."

There was no dissuading Kolya from this objective, this one last shot at total glory and redemption in the eyes of his Genii brethren. The men in this command, all 240 troopers and logistics personnel that stood with Kolya, all knew that if they did not succeed in their objectives, they would all be forever branded as traitors and forced to live in permanent exile.

But their leader had a plan, and he was not about to fail all the soldiers that had taken such a great and terrible risk in joining him in this endeavour… not as long as there was an ounce of breath in him, and there was a goal still yet to be reached.

The enemies of Acastus Kolya would all soon feel the pain of his wrath, the merciless agony of an uncompromising Genii warrior. They would all suffer greatly for the wrongs they had committed upon him, of the intolerable suffering he had endured for the disgraces of others.

Yes, soon enough entire worlds across the galaxy would run red with the blood of his enemies – as Kolya had an advantage unlike any other through an amazing chance discovery, and now with the manpower to exploit it, there would be a new wave of Genii power to rise up and sweep aside the weak and the corrupt.


	2. Chapter One

**CHAPTER ONE**

_The city of Atlantis,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Lieutenant-Colonel John Sheppard stood up on the observation deck overlooking the Gate Room, and watched on as the latest batch of reinforcements from Earth came through the Stargate and into the Pegasus Galaxy. Ever since the Atlantis expedition had been able to locate a pair of Ancient Zero Point Modules (or ZPMs, as they were known as in short), Gate connections between Earth and the Pegasus Galaxy had been possible again, and the city of Atlantis had enough power to run their defensive measurements now in a time of crisis.

It was good, though, that they found a way around the interstellar trips back from the Milky Way to Pegasus, John thought ruefully to himself, remembering the five trips he had been forced to make, that took eighteen days _each. _

He looked down at the men and women coming through the still-active Stargate event-horizon – a seemingly unending wave of personnel, a motley crew of scientists, military personnel, medical professionals and logistics agents. Atlantis sure was taking on its fair share of occupants again… the expedition now numbered at just over five hundred, by the last reports the Colonel had read, and was growing on a weekly basis.

"It's almost becoming routine now, isn't it? The constant contact and resupply with Earth…" a voice said softly from behind him. John turned around, to see Dr Elizabeth Weir, the leader of the Atlantis expedition, standing just behind him, smiling slightly as she too peered out over the edge of the balcony, to watch as the newest additions to her expeditionary force picked up all their multitude of gear and started moving out, away from the Gate.

"Yes… I don't think I've quite gotten over the way we just got our asses saved at the last moment by Colonel Everett and his troops when the Wraith were right at our door," John replied. Elizabeth nodded solemnly.

She remembered watching on, right from the very spot where Sheppard was now standing, as Dr Carson Beckett oversaw the evacuations of the most serious wounded personnel to Earth, all those months ago just after the lifting of the Wraith siege. And she remembered seeing the aged, weathered Colonel Dillon Everett, who'd been fed on by a Wraith warrior during the height of the direct attack on Atlantis, being carried through the Gate by a couple of Carson's orderlies on a stretcher, drained of so much of his life til he was just about on death's doorstep.

"Well, just because we have more of a connection with Earth, and the Wraith believe the city of Atlantis has been destroyed, does not mean we can sit back on our laurels, Colonel Sheppard," Elizabeth said with a wry smirk. "We have to stay ahead of the game here, see how long we can operate in Pegasus without getting drawn into another confrontation with the Wraith… I would rather we not have to deal with the Wraith again until we are in a more secure position of power over them, and I think you'd agree with me on this."

"You're damn right I would. I don't want to go through that madness again anytime soon, let me tell you!" Sheppard shot back, shuddering at the thought of suffering through another full-on Wraith assault.

"Yes, I bet… now, on to some more important matters." Weir turned away and started walking back through the command centre of the city, and into her own private, glass-window enclosed office. Sheppard followed her in. "We have a situation with the Genii that I think requires our immediate attention."

"Oh, that's just great… I just knew the honeymoon wouldn't last!" John said with a wry little chuckle, as he sat down in the chair across the tabletop from Dr Weir and listened to her as she began to detail their latest crisis.

# A #

_Deep within Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Strange as it was, Colonel Steven Caldwell had never really been all that interested in space, or deep-space exploration. He had never really pushed for any postings to NASA, or made any ambitions towards some of the numerous black-ops space vehicles the United States Air Force had been working on continuously for the entire length of the Cold War and into the modern day…

No, he was a simple, by-the-books Air Force career-officer, stern, all-powerful and all knowing – in many ways, he was a hallmark back to the days of the Cold War, where the military man was the only one that mattered. Power and responsibility was something he cherished, and desired to reach out and claim as much of it as he could, within his limited purview.

Although his initial attempt to take over as overall commander of the Atlantis expedition had failed, due to Dr Elizabeth Weir's quite considerable pull with the President of the United States as well as the Stargate's foreign allies, Caldwell did believe that the extreme dangers posed by threats from the Pegasus Galaxy warranted a military officer be put in sole command of such a vital endeavour. And though Weir in herself was a calm, confident enough woman, as far as he could tell, the Colonel held true to this steadfast belief.

Interstellar travel in an alien-assisted, Earth-made and commanded battle-cruiser called the _Daedalus_, the second generation of its kind… now, that was really on the cutting-edge of Air Force technology, and had to be the most incredible command position available in the entire service. He had not expected to be in this position but a few years earlier, could never even have dreamed of it in his wildest imaginings, yet here he was and he could not deny it.

Caldwell had known there were secrets out there, big secrets, but the entire Stargate programme, alien encounters, threats to the very security of the planet Earth, enslavement by a parasitic alien menace known as the Goa'uld, human cultures on other worlds… it was all just so incredible, so unbelievable, yet also was the very essence of truth. And now that he was out there amongst it all, fighting a new threat from the Pegasus Galaxy, the Wraith, the Colonel was forced to make some of the most crucial, far-reaching decisions imaginable.

And, like all commanders in far-flung positions of such importance, he was holding back the tide… fighting battles that earned him the respect and admiration of his crew, and the note of his superiors, holding back the tide of destruction from washing over the entire galaxy and consuming everything in it.

This was just another day in the Pegasus Galaxy – another adventure and another moment of extreme peril.

The Tactical Officer, the most senior command-ranking Air Force person on the bridge at that early hour, had summoned him to the bridge of the _Daedalus_ 0421 hours Zulu. They had detected an anomaly that warranted the Colonel's immediate attention.

Not a particularly unheard-of event, especially considering the environment they were passing through, but then this was a military vessel and it was his task as the commanding officer to see to it that any unusual, anomalous discovery is properly quantified and classified.

They were heading back to the Atlantis outpost from another run to Earth – the last of the kind they were most likely going to make, other than for refitting and maintenance, since Caldwell had been informed over deep-space relay that there was now a new ZPM powering up the Earth Stargate, thanks to the work of the Atlantis expedition.

He had not liked his ship being used as a glorified shuttle service, despite the fact that it was the only effective means at the time of travelling from the Milky Way Galaxy back to the Pegasus Galaxy, without a Zero Point Module being available on Earth. But now with that all changing, it looked like the Colonel and his crew could get back to _real, productive _work, as proud representatives of the United States Air Force.

"Major, what do you have for us this morning?" Colonel Caldwell asked in his customarily punctual manner, striding onto the bridge of the battle-cruiser and taking his place in the unoccupied command chair, right in the centre of the action.

He was a tall man, bald yet somehow dashing in his middle-years, with broad shoulders and a full, strikingly military poise and composure – a true charisma that was utterly unmistakable. Caldwell wore the regular officer's flight suit that was standard-issue onboard the _Daedalus_, with customary Colonel's stripes on his shoulders signifying his military rank. The officer was equipped with a 9mm Beretta sidearm, which he kept armed and primed to fire in a holster strapped to his right leg.

"Sir, we're detecting a electronic broadcast coming from the surface of one of the planets in this star system, on the extreme edge of our detection scanning coverage of this sector of space. It's very low frequency, but is quite strong and constant… and our database has confirmed a match-up with an Ancient emergency distress beacon," Major Edward Norris, the Tactical Officer aboard the _Daedalus_, explained with as much tact, informative directness as possible.

That was the way Steven Caldwell appreciated his briefs, and the officers and enlisted personnel onboard the battle-cruiser were beginning to get the full grip on their new commander.

"Thank-you, Major… Captain, plot a course for the source of this broadcast, one-third military thrust." Caldwell sat back more comfortably in his chair, and watched as the female officer at the helm-controls of the massive star-ship plotted in a course for the planet on which the distress beacon was being broadcast, and the _Daedalus_ turned through the deep void of space towards the planet, then shot away at an increased thrust towards their objective – a small, sparsely-inhabited wasteland planet on the very edges of habitable space within this solar system.

But anything that gave out a signal like Ancient technology, Caldwell thought with a smug, self-interested little grin, was definitely worth more investigation. And a discovery of some worth would only serve to strengthen Steven Caldwell's standing as a military commander, and possibly help him take a step towards Weir's job as the leader of the Atlantis expedition…

# A #

"What the hell's going on, Ronon? We're changing course and speed, and heading further into this sector, not through it and on the way closer to Atlantis!" Dr Rodney McKay said in exasperation, as he sat down at one of the nearby, unoccupied consoles in the Officer's Mess and began typing away at the keyboard.

Ronon Dex, the newest member of the Atlantis expedition's flagship team, had just journeyed to Earth for the first time through the Stargate from Atlantis, the only Stargate in the Pegasus Galaxy capable of connecting a stable wormhole to the homeworld of the Tau'ri. He was still getting over the lukewarm reception he had received there from the senior command personnel at the SGC.

Although it had been made abundantly clear by Lt Colonel John Sheppard AND Dr Elizabeth Weir that he was now a full-fledged member of the Atlantis team, it did not sit well with them at all to have an alien fighter amongst their personnel in the Pegasus Galaxy, no matter his 'stated' intentions.

It was a legitimate concern a small, rational part of Dex could grasp upon and understand, but the overriding notion that he had for all those hours that the intelligence analysts spent grilling him was to cause some serious, brutally vicious physical harm….

Before the nightmare that was his life as a Runner, forever hounded by the Wraith for a strange blend of entertainment and training purposes, Ronon had been a military soldier, a combat specialist, on the planet Sateda. But instead of being fed upon by the Wraith once he had been swept up in a culling on his homeworld, he had been turned lose by his captors, to be hunted relentlessly through the Gates by never-ending parties of Wraith.

After the initially hostile encounter with Sheppard and his people, which had led slowly up to a position of wary trust and understanding, then to something more, Dex had found his path converging with the Atlanteans from Earth. Though they themselves were not the Ancestors, nor did they pretend to be, they were indeed their descendants, and Ronon saw their potential to be the best hope for the Pegasus Galaxy and all of the human populations amongst those stars. For the time being, Ronon was satisfied to align himself with Colonel Sheppard, Dr Weir, and the people of the city of Atlantis.

Rodney McKay, though, was one of those incredibly galling few who had the uncanny ability to be instantly detestable. Dex did not understand how Teyla and John could have gone on for so long working side by side with the 'good doctor', without one of them just putting a couple of bullets into him and leaving him on some world to bleed out and die.

"I'm sure there's a fair enough reason for the change, Rodney, just wait and see if we can find out without bothering anybody," Dex said, as calmly as he could manage under the circumstances.

McKay, though, was not about to heed Ronon's advice, and the big man knew this even as he was speaking the words out aloud. Rodney had to be in the loop on all things, this was quite obviously his way as the self-designated 'mega-genius' of the Atlantis expedition.

"Oh my… well then, that is interesting, now isn't it?" Dr McKay said softly to himself, leaning back into the swivel chair as he watched the screen full of numbers and data scroll across the monitor. Ronon walked over til he was standing right behind Rodney, peering over the scientist's shoulder… but he had to turn away from the screen and look at something else within a matter of moments. The movement of the information across the monitor was blurring, and quite nauseating. "It seems they've picked up an Ancient electronic distress beacon of some kind, and are moving in to investigate."

"Sounds very interesting…" Ronon ventured. He knew that any technology of the Ancestors, especially in functional, working condition, no matter what it actually was, was quite an important find for them all.

Suddenly, Rodney snapped straight up to attention in his chair and leaned right in close to the screen, hitting a couple of keystrokes so that he pulled up a graphical depiction of the electronic signal they were receiving. Hie eyes bulged out wide in their sockets, and he let out a deep, horrified gasp.

"Oh no… oh no oh no oh no oh no."

"What, McKay, what's wrong?" Dex asked, picking up on the honestly alarmed expression on Rodney's face and instantly concerned.

"I need to get in touch with Colonel Caldwell on the bridge – right now!" Rodney snapped, bolting right up out of the chair as though he'd been struck by lightning. He raced over to the nearest intercom line and pulled the receiver down off its cradle. "We're all in serious, SERIOUS trouble here!"

Dex, clueless as to what exactly Dr McKay had discovered, let out a disgruntled little huff and walked on over to join Rodney, and listen in (at least to the Canadian's side of the conversation) as the other man tried to reach the Colonel on the bridge of the _Daedalus._


	3. Chapter Two

**CHAPTER TWO**

_The city of Atlantis,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

"Now then, this is all preliminary at the moment, but one of Teyla's people has come forward with a very intriguing tale to tell," Dr Weir said to Lt Colonel Sheppard, within the privacy of her own office within the Ancient city of Atlantis. "I don't quite know what to make of it myself, so your thoughts on this would be most welcome."

"Sure, Elizabeth, lay it out for me," John replied, giving her a broad, warm and friendly smile.

"Well, this Athosian, along with Teyla as support and a witness to this man's character, came to me to say that a man, someone he had known and had done many trades with over the years, revealed to him in private that he was indeed a Genii spy." Weir waited a few long moments for her words to sink in, then carried on. "This had happened off-world, of course, on a trade mission to a planet the Athosians know of well. He made the approach to this Athosian, Malden, so that he could relay the conversation back to us. This Genii is claiming to be a very senior member of their intelligence organization, and promises to hand over a vast amount of useful information of their operations throughout the galaxy – for protection from his brethren, and asylum amongst the Athosians on the mainland."

"What? Why on Earth would he want that…?" Sheppard exclaimed. Then he realized just what he had said, smiled broadly, and shook his head in exasperation. "Well, you know what I'm getting at, Elizabeth. It really doesn't seem like a trade that a Genii agent would want to make, to give over such vital information and risk so much, betraying his own people, just to live amongst the Athosians as simple farmers and traders. This doesn't sit right with me… we might be walking into a trap here, or being purposefully led astray, some kind of Genii disinformation operation."

Weir sighed heavily, and rubbed the forefingers of both of her hands hard into her aching temple. "John," she said, her voice slightly muffled as she was speaking into her hands, "I really don't know what this is all about, and quite frankly I don't have a good feeling about this either. But there is a possibility that this is genuine and on the level – I want to play it out, to see if we can get any useful information out of this man or if not. I want to find out if it's a legitimate defection or if we're being set up, too, as soon as we can. But if this is real… we have to do whatever's necessary to make this happen."

"I understand that… but we can't trust the Genii. Ever. They're dangerous, manipulative, ruthless bastards, Elizabeth, you have to know that yourself…" the Lieutenant Colonel, his voice tightening up a little due to suppressed rage, said in almost a whisper.

"I know that, John, I know… this could be just what we need to get a leverage over their intelligence network, though, and isn't that worth a little risk?" Weir stated. She looked up at him, straight up into John Sheppard's eyes. "It is, and you know it too."

"Yes I know… look, Elizabeth, let me go out there and help Teyla and this Malden fellow. They need to be wary, on the lookout for lies and double-crosses. I don't quite think this is going to play out the way any of us expect, I really don't, but I'll do my best to get this guy back here to Atlantis, and then from there we'll see if he's for real or just a fake." Sheppard gave her his most pleading, puppy-dogged look he could manage. "Please, let me go out there and help bring this guy in."

"Go, Sheppard, go… that was what I was thinking of, anyway," Weir answered. "Teyla and Malden are on the alert for more Genii, and are cautious about the man who's supposedly wanting to join with us, knowing that he could betray them or mislead them. But they don't quite have the experience in these matters as I think you do."

John Sheppard nodded his head slightly. "Thank-you, Elizabeth. You won't regret this." He stood up out of his chair and moved away from the desk, towards the door that opened up out of Dr Weir's office. "I'll be ready to go in 15 minutes."

"Good…" Weir said. She wanted to say more, so much more, but cut herself off. She peered out the glass window beside her desk, staring down at the Stargate in the Gate Room below. And she let out a sad little huff, knowing that the burden of command was something she had to deal with, had to live with, every day she remained in charge of the Atlantis expedition.

Suddenly, though, she knew she had to say something more to Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, before he walked out of her office. As he was stepping over the threshold, she called out, "John!" He stopped, turned around slightly in the doorway, looked back at her. "John… good luck, and stay safe!"

The corners of his mouth turned upwards just a little, in a way that could almost be akin to a shadow of a smile. With that tiny little smirk, John Sheppard ducked away and was gone, out of sight.

Weir leaned back in her chair, and hoped and prayed that everything would turn out okay, that all of her people would come out of this alive…

# A #

_Deep within Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Rodney McKay leaned up against the far wall of the Officer's Mess alongside Ronon Dex, and waited for somebody on the bridge of the battle-cruiser to pick up the intercom on their end. It took a long while, but finally a gruff male voice answered on the other end of the line. "Tactical Officer here."

McKay knew this guy – Norris, was his name Norris? Rodney thought it was… he also was pretty sure the man held the rank of Major but wasn't quite confident about this point. "Major Norris, listen to me, it's Dr Rodney McKay here. I need to talk to Colonel Caldwell immediately, it's a matter of life and death."

"Really, Doctor, the Colonel is extremely busy here… we don't have time to keep you informed at this point."

"Major, JUST PUT CALDWELL ON THE PHONE, NOW!" McKay screamed down the line. Ronon was stunned, Norris was stunned… and Rodney was shocked most of all by his outburst. He didn't even know he had it in himself, let alone was able to bring such gutsy, brutish bravado out when it was needed most.

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment, but then the sound of muttered voices, soft conversations, reached Rodney's ear. Then McKay was suddenly almost deafened by hissing feedback, and finally the deep, monotonous voice of Colonel Steven Caldwell came onto the intercom. "Dr McKay, this had better be _real_ important."

"Trust me, Colonel, it is," Rodney replied, with all of his confident bravado and lofty cockiness. He was now back in his element, explaining a grand new discovery he had made that was going to save them all from calamity. "I don't exactly know how they did it, or who exactly _they _are to begin with, but we are not reading an Ancient distress beacon. I doubt there is any Ancient technology at all on this world we are travelling towards. No, what we are actually picking up is a WRAITH transponder relay of some kind, created to pick up Wraith messages and signals, and bounce them along a network that runs across the entire length of the galaxy. In this way, the Wraith can keep communications active across a vastly large span of space. Someone has very cleverly rewired it to give out a signal similar to an Ancient beacon, but it is not exactly the same, there are minute differences – and I'm also picking up the original Wraith signal buried deep within the readouts we've been picking up; it was too deep within the overriding fake Ancient signal for your analysis programmes to pick it out."

"So what you're saying is… someone's 'hotwired' a Wraith relay station to broadcast an Ancient signal?" Caldwell asked, disbelief quite evident in every word he spoke.

"Yes Colonel, that's exactly what I'm saying. I see this all quite clearly right before my very eyes, Dr Novak could have verified this as well if she was onboard the ship in the first place, and Dr Zelenka would definitely have spotted this too, probably just when it's too late to do anything about it but still…" Rodney huffed, then pulled himself up short, tried to calm himself as much as possible, and laid out his recommendations as best he could. "Colonel, I don't think we should proceed any closer to the planet. This signal you are detecting is bogus, its fake, and someone set it up for a reason… to draw somebody into a trap of some kind, is my likely thought. It's best if we just turned around right now, and carry on our journey back to Atlantis."

"Dr McKay, you cannot seriously expect me to turn this vessel around and carry on our way again, like we never picked up any transmission at all…" Caldwell replied, incredulously. "No, we will continue onward as planned. I will make sure that every precaution is taken to ensure the safety and security of this ship, Doctor. You have nothing to be concerned about."

There was an audible click as Colonel Caldwell hung up on Rodney. McKay stared down at the receiver hanging limply in his right hand for the longest while, then at last shook himself out of it and put the device back on its cradle, up by the intercom.

"So, what's the Colonel going to do?" Dex asked. He had heard McKay's side of the conversation at least, so he had a lot more of an understanding of what was going on than before.

"He's just going to keep going…" Rodney said softly. "I have no idea what we're getting ourselves into, Ronon, but I tell you, whatever happens, it won't be good for us."

# A #

_On a small world on the outer edge of  
Sector 1146, the Pegasus Galaxy._

This planet had a Stargate, but it was quite obvious that travellers did not come to this world from the moment Kolya set eyes upon the bland, inhospitable wastelands that stretched out to all the horizons. There were few if any vegetation to speak of, little water, and the ground looked quite ragged and infertile.

To the west of the Gate, a huge range of towering mountains rose up out of the nothingness, the one distinctive natural marker Commander Acastus Kolya and his people had found on the planet so far. It was within the vast, dank catacombs of those mountains, that he had found his salvation…

Egan, the current acting Group Leader of the Genii Strike Force due to the 'tragic' death of his illustrious predecessor, came driving up to Kolya in one of the eight Genii all-terrain vehicles. It was a buggy that had a roll-cage, four wheels with the two forward ones hunched further forward from the chassis than the back ones, two seats at the front and a gunner's chair on the back, with its own rear-mounted swivel auto-cannon for heavy-weapons ordinance, and a supercharged petroleum engine. They were beasts, the Genii ATVs, and Acastus was proud of his people for being able to get their hands on some using the right trading contacts.

"Would you like a lift, sir?" the young officer said to his superior with a slight bow of his head, sitting behind the driving wheel of the high-speed vehicle.

"Yes Egan, I sure would." Then, to the 20 men that had followed Kolya through the Stargate and were acting as his personal bodyguard retinue, he said, "Fan out around the Gate and deploy yourselves in a defensive pattern you deem fit. I want the Gate held against any and all possible threats, for as long as it takes. If it comes to a fight here, I know you will not let me down!"

With that, the passenger got out of the side of the ATV and went around to the empty gunner's position, taking up the controls of the auto-cannon and sitting back in the big chair to take up the ride. Kolya got into the newly vacated seat beside Egan, and they were off with a swirl of dust across the wide-open plain, at an incredible, almost reckless speed.

# A #

It only really became apparent once you were very close to the mountains, Acastus thought reflectively to himself. Then the structure became clearer, carved so majestically into the very rock itself. It was a magnificent structure, broad and incredibly squared, shaped and sculptured with uniformity solely on the agenda.

A Wraith construction if ever there was one, but of a much older design than most of their architecture that still survived – many thousands of years old, older than most things that still remained in Pegasus.

Not all things were built to last for eons, to survive through the ages, but this was definitely created to withstand the very bombardments of time itself…

The Genii Commander, who utterly loathed the ceaseless brutality and ferocity of the Wraith, could not help but find himself impressed by those who could construct such an unimaginable building. But they were not so much like the creatures Kolya dealt with now, he did not believe they had been at heart, not those who built this structure. Those had to be a thoroughly different kind of Wraith to those who now infested the Pegasus Galaxy.

Egan slowed the ATV down, and then pulled up at last to a stop right out the front of the Wraith-constructed building. They both quickly got out of their seats and scurried up the staircase to the large, dark entryway to the interior of the structure, leaving the Genii soldier out on the gun-turret on the back of the ATV to say on guard-duty.

Within the structure itself, there was a dim light coming from further within. As they drew nearer to the light, the two men could see the dark shadows of the five Genii troopers they had left to guard the two logistics personnel operating within the facility. One of the men, a Platoon Leader, noticed the men approaching and, once he saw that one of them was the venerated Commander Kolya, he snapped up to attention and saluted promptly. The rest of his men quickly followed suit.

Kolya returned the gesture, and congratulated the men on a successful task. Then he quickly moved on past the soldiers, in search of the two people he'd left there at the Wraith structure.

Kayne, the Wraith technologies and weapons expert, was hunched over a very complex-looking conduit network, which he'd been able to gain access to by removing a very old, quite heavy granite slab the Wraith had used in much of the construction of the facility.

Commander Acastus Kolya walked over to stand beside the older, wizened Genii, and stayed silent, calmly waiting for Kayne to finish what he was doing and respond to his presence in his own time. Few men at all had ever earned Kolya's respect, and fewer still had earned his deference – Kayne had both.

"I've managed to mask the lingering Wraith signal completely in our false Ancestor beacon transmission," Kayne said softly to his Commander, without looking up from what he was doing. He used a copper-wiring tool to pry away a vein-like relay cable within the Wraith panel, then wired the cable to another cut server and welded both connections together. With a slight smile of satisfaction, the old tech rose up from his crouched position and at last looked Kolya full in the eye. "It would have been quite improbable indeed if the Lanteans picked up on our subterfuge, and Venetia assures me that the vessel has continued on its current course and speed, so it does not look like we have to be concerned."

Out of one of the side rooms came a stunningly attractive woman, a brunette, with her hair tied back in a tight ponytail, sharp cold blue eyes, an exquisite aquiline face, and a full, tight muscular physique that was honed to a razor point for ruthless, brutal combat. Her name was Venetia, and she was just as smart, quick-witted and deadly-intelligent, as she was gorgeous. She was a combat technician, with a variety of specialties that made her a useful component of Strike Forces operating in important missions off-world.

"Yes Commander, the Lantean space-vessel is travelling towards us at a continuous course and speed, with little in the way any of noticeable deviation. I have also detected a number of Wraith ships making course changes to investigate our signal – we already have four Wraith cruisers within the solar system, and within ten minutes, all of those vessels and the Lantean ship will be within the effective operations-range of the energy weapon." Venetia spoke with the calm, deadpan monotone of a calm, concise professional.

That was one of her great drawcards – Kayne's also. They were not arrogant, self-confident egotists, Kolya thought. He still remembered that ingrate bastard, Dr McKay, and the way he acted even when he was staring death right in the face. He was a weak, foolish piece of scum. Acastus had detested the man for his selfishness, more than anything else.

"Okay, well that was much more than we could have possibly hoped for – to strike out against the Wraith as well as at our Lantean foes!" Kolya said joyously. He turned to look at Kayne. "I need that device operational within five minutes, Kayne. Can I count on you?"

"Consider it done, Commander." The ageless Genii expert grinned, and his whole face crinkled up into one big wrinkled mass. "None of those ignorant fools have a clue what's coming to 'em!"


	4. Chapter Three

**CHAPTER THREE**

_The city of Atlantis,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

John Sheppard stood there calmly on the last step of the staircase, looking across the Gate Room towards the Stargate itself, as one of the Gate technicians in the operations centre on the level above dialled in the address of the planet he was travelling to.

He was decked out in full combat garb – armed with a P-90 assault rifle for short- to medium-ranged offensive and defensive firepower, with a 8mm Beretta sidearm as a secondary weapon, and the quite unique Bowie knife for close-quarters fighting… a gift from the injured, and now departed, Colonel Dillon Everett.

He had been further briefed by an Athosian woman on the world he would be heading to, and the native inhabitants who lived in small villages all around their Stargate. The Athosians had been trading with these people, the Gizan, for the better part of five generations. They were an agrarian society like so many others across the entire Pegasus Galaxy, simple farming folk, who lived quite spartanly and tired to enjoy as much of their quiet existence as they could, with the threat of the indomitable Wraith forever-present.

The Lieutenant Colonel knew the score – he'd done enough off-world operations, and made contact with enough societies just like this one, to understand the type of environment he would be travelling into quite intimately. He was not interested so much in making contact with the people or setting up diplomatic relations with their leaders… not on this mission.

This time, it was all about one man – the Genii spy who wanted to defect.

Every ounce of John's being, every instinct that he had to guide him, said that this was a mistake somehow, that things were going to go to hell right from the start. But if that initial feeling of suspicion and mistrust was unfounded, if the Genii was the real deal and on the level… the benefits he could offer them all were too good to disregard.

But there was also the possibility that this guy, this intelligence operative, would be the greatest danger they had to deal with in a long while… a disinformation agent or saboteur could do quite a lot of damage to the Atlantis expedition, John knew and understood this. He'd be damned if he'd be fooled by this man's lies, though, if he lied – no way no how.

The final chevron locked, and the Gate's event-horizon erupted out of the centre of the circular ring, tearing across half the room in a bluey-white ball of destructive energy. The Gate's connection with the Gizan homeworld had been established, and the event-horizon stabilized after a few long moments of its usual disability.

Lt Colonel John Sheppard raced forward, his P90 up and at the ready, striding purposefully towards the strangely watery, almost translucent Stargate. Without pausing in his stride, he leapt through the event-horizon, and rode the wormhole connection through the stars and across the cosmos, to his destination, on the other side of the Pegasus Galaxy.

# A #

_On a small world on the outer edge of__  
Sector 1146, the Pegasus Galaxy._

Kayne withdrew a strange, almost archaic totem-worship device from a small, very well-concealed alcove nearby, and placed it on the floor in front of him before sitting down and beginning to work away at the ancient panel on one of its faces. It had six sides, was made out of the darkest of black marbles, and was of distinctly Wraith technology, if one knew how to recognize it…

At one time, a small tribe of native humans on a small backwater jungle-world HAD worshipped it, believing it was significantly responsible for the Wraith staying away from their world. The Genii had identified it as something much more than an inanimate object of devotion, and had claimed it as their own, slaughtering the local inhabitants of the planet when they had tried to deny them their prize.

The front panel was filled with various symbols and Wraith numbers, strangely similar yet different than their current Wraith equivalents – their systems of measurement and recording had evolved over thousands upon thousands of years, to the point where they had almost regressed back to a more simplistic, primitive form of themselves, losing some of the old knowledge and mastery of certain powerful, arcane technologies over the aeons.

At least, that was what Kayne and a small cabal of his acolytes were beginning to ascertain, over a very long period of research, discovery, and observation.

Right at that moment though, it was taking all of Kayne's focus and concentration to hit the right icons in the right speed and combination to activate the device, the 'weapon', in the way that he desired.

He was dealing with a very powerful piece of alien weaponry, designed to render electronically-based technology completely and utterly useless over a very vast distance – but when it was put up to its most powerful setting, it could literally obliterate them all and easily destroy half of this planet they were on.

The Genii were not quite looking for something that extreme, at least not at that point in time – they were wishing to disable a few ships out there in the black void of space, leaving their enemies helpless and incapacitated so that the next phase in their operation could be activated.

Kayne was confident that the device would render all electronic technology – even Wraith technology – effectively useless, across two-thirds of the entire solar system they were in. Thus, he had also faked an Ancient distress beacon… and the Genii had only to wait and let all the targets they could have hoped for come right to them! It was a perfect plan… and so far, everything had been carried out fluidly, well within schedule.

At that moment, Commander Acastus Kolya came forward again, peering down at Kayne as he worked. "Activate the weapon as soon as you can, don't wait for permission from me."

"As you wish, sir," Kayne replied.

Then, by pressing on his radio-transmitter, Kolya was able to broadcast a message to all of his forces across the surface of the planet, "Genii Strike Force, this is Commander Kolya. Deactivate all electronically-operated devices now until further notice."

Once this order was broadcast and all operating units confirmed it, Acastus switched off his transmitter, and powered down his auto-pistol.

All the while, Kayne had kept his head down and carried on with his job, not even bothering to look up at Kolya even once.

He finally got the combination that he'd been after all the while. There was a loud humming sound, and then the device began to crack open up at its top, four slabs of its top-section slid away from the central point and, inside, the Genii technician could see a very bright, pulsing blueness… Kayne had to turn away sharply as the throbbing light suddenly exploded in intensity, and a wave of energy wafted through the entire room from out of the depths of the device.

A tingling sensation coursed through Kayne, as the blue wave of energy passed completely through him. It was almost like an electrical charge. Quickly it spread out from that point, sweeping through the entire structure, then (though no-one could actually_ see_ it) coursed upwards and outwards, quickly covering the entire planet and growing upon itself.

The field of blue energy ripped out across the span of space itself, until half the system was engulfed in its strange environment. The Wraith cruisers, and the Lantean star-ship, were well within its effective range… soon, Kayne knew, they would all be struck down, rendered worse than helpless by the Genii.

And his people would owe it all to him, Kayne – the man who'd found a way to use science, intelligence, and technology to triumph over the great powers of the Pegasus Galaxy.

# A #

_On the outer edge of Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

It happened suddenly, violently, and was absolutely devastating, affecting everything and everyone all at once. Rodney had been expecting some sort of attack to come, but when it did, and when it struck them without warning and possessed such unmitigated savagery, it stunned even him.

One moment, they were moving through the dark nothingness of space at an incredibly fast speed – though to McKay, Ronon Dex, and most everyone else onboard the _Daedalus_, the inertial dampeners and gravity drives made it feel like they weren't even moving at all. The next, they came to a sudden stop; lights blew out all over the ship, consoles and computer relays, anything at all that had a microchip or was of some kind of electronics-technology, were destroyed – some even exploded into flames, or fizzled out, sparking all over the place.

The battle-cruiser even shuddered and groaned, as its military-drive engines fluttered out and the vessel started to float through space on its own accord, with its own momentum of travel propelling it.

Ronon was thrown off his feet by a jarring explosion that rocked through their level, and slammed his head viciously against a nearby table. McKay was sent hurdling across the room when the computer monitor he was peering at exploded – he got a deep cut down the side of his face, which gushed out blood all down the front of his face. He was thrown back in his chair, his head rolling back around his shoulders, and was knocked out cold for a minute or two just as Ronon was, while the worst of it passed them both by and tore through the rest of the vessel.

Dr McKay was the first one to slowly rise up out of his unconscious stupor. He slowly looked around the room through the red curtain of blood that billowed down across his face, and let out a low groan of pain as the throbbing intensity of his head wound washed over him. Rodney slowly raised his right arm up to his face and, using the long shirtsleeve of the Air Force flight-jacket he was dressed in, wiped the blood off his face as much as he could.

"Oh, well that sure wasn't pleasant…!" McKay said softly, then let his eyes sweep over the Officer's Mess again, til he saw Ronon lying sprawled out across the floor nearby. "Ronon! Ronon, are you okay?"

He rushed over to his friend as quickly as he could, and slowly grabbed hold of Dex around his broad, massive shoulders, lifting him up with a deep sigh and half-lifting, half-dragging him over to a nearby chair. The scientist managed, with a fair degree of difficulty that was matched only by his sheer determination, to hoist the much larger, bulkier man up onto the chair. Ronon was slowly starting to come back around, but he wasn't yet capable of being much of any help.

Once he'd seen to Ronon's care, and checked that he wasn't injured other than quite a big, deep bruise to the right side of his forehead, Dr McKay started to slowly move around the Officer's Mess. He could hardly see anything at all, as the only light illuminating the large room were from small electrical fires that had flickered up due to the damaged components all over the place.

He could tell that there wasn't a single electronic device working that had been operating before the 'event' – and Rodney could feel a cold, steely sense of foreboding curling up inside his guts. This looked quite a lot like some kind of electromagnetic pulse strike, at least when McKay looked around and took in the aftermath of the attack… but the _Daedalus_ had been especially designed against such an assault.

Well, at least any type of EMP strike that they'd ever known or experienced, before that moment anyway…

It was his initial thought that they had been the victims of some strange, immensely powerful and disruptive EMP strike – and Rodney McKay could not shake that notion, could not come up with any other idea that could properly fill in all the gaps like the EMP theory could.

They had been suckered into a trap with the false Ancient beacon, had been lured in close enough so someone, or some group, could activate a powerful weapon of some kind and strike out against all the _Daedalus' _electronics devices – it had been a perfect plan, flawlessly executed.

Rodney had managed to see right through the charade, if only for a moment… but no one else had really backed him. Ronon had been swept up by the fear that permeated McKay, and he backed Rodney only because he knew the man was innately intelligent, though extremely arrogant.

Suddenly, from across the room, McKay heard Ronon Dex let out a deep groan, and open his eyes up slowly. The doctor moved quickly over to check on the big, broad fighter. He put a hand reassuringly on Ronon's right shoulder.

"Are you alright, Ronon? Can you see alright, your head isn't hurting too badly is it?" Rodney asked.

The scruffy-haired man rose up a little bit in his chair, flexed his shoulders, and twisted his head slowly from side to side, then back again. "Yeah Doc, I think I'm okay…" Dex grumbled. He slowly looked up at McKay. "What the hell happened to us?"

The scientist stared back down at Ronon, let out a deep sigh, and shook his head. "We got what was coming to us, Ronon… it's as simple as that." Rodney snickered almost self-reproachfully. "I should have done more – I COULD have done more, damnit. But now… I just don't know how we're going to get out of this."

Dex looked away. He didn't like what he'd woken up to at all, and the side of his head was really starting to hurt, as his bruise swelled up.

Then, suddenly and a little shockingly to both Dex and McKay, there was a bright shaft of light that shone in from the hallway beyond one of the exits from the Officer's Mess, and they could see three Air Force personnel half-staggering into the room.

One of them (the officer that was clutching the torch), Rodney recognized almost instantly as the _Daedalus' _Tactical Officer, Major Edward Norris. They all looked the worse for ware… but Norris especially. Somehow, McKay just couldn't bring himself to feel much in the way of pity for the military officer, who hadn't wanted to take him seriously when he had been right all along about the dangers of their plight.

"Dr McKay! We need your help here with this situation. No electronic device that was operating when we were attacked before is working now – they've been completely fried. We are not capable of establishing any primary, secondary or backup functions whatsoever, and we have been trying ever since the attack," Norris explained. "Look, Rodney, we know we should have listened to you now, that you were right; this had to be a set-up to get at us. But now we need to get the _Daedalus _operating again, or else we'll all just keep cruising dead through the void of space, utterly unable to move or defend ourselves."

Rodney groaned, and gave the bridge-officer the most reproachful look he could muster. "Look, I didn't cause this mess, you guys did – I warned the lot of you, way before this happened, but you military-types chose to ignore me and now, when everything's finally gone to hell in a hand-basket, you want MY help to get us out of the hole YOU dug us into!"

"McKay, we've lost five people in this attack already!" the Major snapped out. He sighed, tried very hard to pull himself back into line, but his face was still flushed read and contorted in rage. "We know we screwed things up now, but hindsight won't do any of us any good, okay? We have to try and get this dead vessel back to life, or at least get its primary functions operating again, and get us out of here right now before anything else happens! Now, HELP US GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"

Both Ronon and Rodney were taken aback by Major Norris' outburst, but they could hardly argue with or counter what he was saying. Dr McKay stepped right up to Norris, and stuck out his right hand. "It's okay, let's put all this behind us and get the hell out of here."

Ed Norris took Rodney's hand and shook it warmly. Then the men quickly filed out of the room, with Ronon Dex taking up the rear, staggering slightly on his feet as he went along. They had work – a great deal of work – to do, and they had to start straight away… it was time to get back some semblance of control, and get right on out of there.

# A #

_The Gizan Homeworld,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Sheppard came through on the other side of the Stargate, and took his first step out onto the homeworld of the Gizan. He had emerged out into the middle of a large, open clearing, that was surrounded on all sides by thick twisting trees and overgrown foliage of all descriptions.

John could tell that the path leading from the Gate was well-travelled – the footprint indentations were quite clear, and the ground was worn down to the dirt along a certain pathway that stretched off towards the trees.

As Lt Colonel John Sheppard moved cautiously towards the tree-line, his P-90 raised up to his eyes and held tightly against his shoulder, the Air Force officer suddenly caught some movement out of the corner of his vision and snapped around on the spot, quickly bringing up his assault rifle to aim the weapon at the possible danger.

There was nothing there… but John could not shake the notion that there HAD been something there just moments before, and that he was being observed right at that precise moment, by quite vicious, unfriendly eyes.

Colonel Sheppard couldn't shake the feeling as he continued on towards the trees, where they parted for the pathway to continue running off into the depths of the dark, shadowy bushlands.

Teyla Emmagan appeared soon after John began the journey in past the tree-line, and quickly joined up with her friend, colleague and commanding officer. She gave him a broad smile. "Colonel Sheppard, it is good to see you here," she said. "Malden and I could surely use your help with this man."

"So, Teyla, please be honest – what do you think? Do you believe this Genii operative's on the level, is being truthful? Or do you think this whole thing is an elaborate set-up?" Teyla Emmagan always had an ability to read people, to gauge the character of their personality and take stock of the inner depth of their soul. John Sheppard knew that, if anyone was going to see through any deception on the part of the Genii, it would be Teyla.

"I honestly do not know, Colonel – this man is a spy, an intelligence officer adept to secrets and lies. But there is a strange serenity about him, a peaceful centre that I believe is true, is real. If anything is real at all about this Genii operative, it is that he is sincere about what he is saying – at least, that is what my instincts are telling me." Teyla seemed somewhat sheepish when she said this, and Sheppard smiled at her lopsidedly, and gave her a slight nod of reassurance.

In the end, anyway, it would come down to him, the decision whether this was a legitimate approach or a disinformation operation.

They walked through the thick, oppressive forests for about four miles, until the path opened out into a large clearing that was filled with medium- to large-sized huts and wooden structures. This, Teyla Emmagan informed him, was the closest Gizan settlement to the Stargate. And it was also where the Genii spy had been operating from for the past seven years…

He was safely stored away with Malden, in a safe-house near the centre of the settlement. John thought that was a good move on Teyla's part, to leave the spy under the watch of either herself or her Athosian companion – it was never too much to apply prudent caution, when it was proper to do so.

There was that nagging feeling again that he was being watched… Sheppard snapped his head around, back towards the trees; back the way they had come. And again, he didn't see a thing to put credence to his concerns. But the feeling was there, was strong as ever – it knotted him up inside, the fear of the unknown. John didn't like it at all.

Something deep down inside told him, though, that the unknown wouldn't remain that way for long – that whatever was out there was about to reveal itself to him. The Colonel was determined that he would be ready, for _any_ possible eventuality…


	5. Chapter Four

**CHAPTER FOUR**

_Gizan Homeworld,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

The Gizan people were just as John had imagined – quiet, simple folk, not altogether hostile towards him, but also not particularly warm and welcoming either, because he was a stranger to them. They had well-established shelters that seemed to be built well, and quite properly designed to hold up against all the viciousness of the natural elements of this planet.

As he continued to move further on into the settlement, with Teyla Emmagan walking by his side, Lt Colonel Sheppard could see that they were getting quite a lot of attention from the local inhabitants, and he wasn't entirely sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. John looked up at the sky above, and saw a big, bright sun beating down on him from the heavens – he winced from the pain of the sunlight, and quickly reached into a shoulder-pocket of his combat outfit to take out a pair of tinted, anti-flash wraparound sunglasses to put on.

"Yes, the sunlight on this world is extremely intense," Teyla Emmagan, with a slight smile creasing her attractive features, said softly. "I have encountered few habitable worlds in my travels that are as close to their sun as this world… but the Gizan have made it their home for countless generations."

"Well, let's just try and get ourselves under some cover before I break out into blisters all over, shall we?" John replied dourly. He felt a little uneasy still, and when they started moving out again, he was forever glancing around their immediate environs, trying to scope out any and all possible threats amongst the houses and the trees all around them…

The house Teyla had led John to was indeed near the very heart of the Gizan settlement – it was a large building, larger than the other houses around them, and was three storeys tall. Teyla Emmagan explained that it was the home of the chieftain of the Gizan, a good friend of Malden and the Athosians, who had been more than happy to accommodate them in properly securing their Genii captive until his true intentions could be verified.

They stepped up to the front door of the building, and Teyla was about to knock on it so they could get inside when, inexplicably, the Colonel's already-heightened sense of danger peaked to a real, immediate threat to their lives…

Suddenly, John felt as though they were both in mortal danger _right at that precise moment_, and every fibre of his being screamed at him to _move, move, MOVE!_

Sheppard didn't wait for one single second to think about his innate feeling – he simply _reacted_, grabbing Teyla Emmagan roughly by her right arm and yanking her off her footing, over with him as he dove into some nearby bushes.

The bullets slammed right into the wooden front-doorway where they'd both been standing a split-second later, shredding the door and sending splinters of plywood flying out from the impact zone. High-velocity rounds, fired from a concealed position _very_ close by – and Sheppard would have bet his mother's life on the culprit, or culprits, being Genii.

Rolling along the ground until he had quickly righted himself, with his P-90 assault rifle trained outwards in the direction of the weapons-fire, John made a razor-quick calculation and decided to take a chance – he returned fire, pulling back on the trigger of his automatic-weapon so that it spat out hundreds of rounds of deadly, armour-piercing rounds.

The trees, bushes and other foliage all around the area Lt Colonel Sheppard was firing at were decimated, as the lethal discharge wrought its deadly handiwork and cut through everything with equal efficiency. After about 15 seconds firing on full-auto, John released the trigger, ejected the spent magazine of bullets, and quickly, effectively replaced it with a new mag in one smooth and fluid motion.

"Are you alright, Teyla?" John asked after a short while, as he rose up slowly to his feet, still with his wraparound glasses on, breathing heavily, his entire system flooded with adrenaline.

"Yes John… thanks to you I'm fine." Teyla looked around at the damage done to the front of the wooden building, with all the massive bullet-holes blown through the door and the front wall of the house. They had been in the direct line of fire but a split-second before the impact of those rounds… she shuddered to think what would have become on them if it weren't for the Colonel and his quick-witted actions.

"Come on, I want to see if I managed to hit anything out there," Sheppard said, as he moved cautiously out away from the damaged safe-house, towards the part of the forest-area off to the left that the weapons-fire which had almost killed them had come from.

The trees were all stripped of their bark, or cut through completely by the maelstrom of bullets John had unleashed, and the bushes and shrubs had been scythed through with an almost clinical uniformity. There was little of anything left unscathed by the devastation of Sheppard's P-90 volley. They found the corpse a little way in amongst the trees, still clutching the long-rifle she had used to try and kill them both…

Teyla gasped. It looked at first as though the perpetrator was Gizan – she was dressed in the usual drab, somewhat tattered clothes of those people, and had her hair styled in the short-cropped, practical way of their womenfolk. But then she looked closer, just as John was doing, and noticed what the woman with the gun was dressed in underneath her outer disguise.

The dark, clearly militaristic dress of the Genii soldiery marked this woman out clearly as the enemy she was – obviously, a sniper sent to eliminate the danger that their spy might pose… OR help cement his legitimacy in the eyes of the Atlantis expedition. John really didn't know what to make on the attempt on their lives – the only thing he knew of for sure was that the threat was still there, that this woman marksman might not be operating alone, and that their position at this house might just be fatally compromised.

"We have to get out of this settlement… tonight, when the sun goes down," Sheppard said resolutely. "It's possible that this woman is not operating alone, that there are more Genii out there who may or may not now know the location of our safe-house. We must relocate."

"Agreed," Teyla concurred, taking another glance down at the Genii soldier's body. John Sheppard was saddened that he had taken this woman's life, but she was a Genii fighter who had posed an immediate threat to both his own safety and that of a fellow team-member. The only option available was to act, and to take decisive measures…

"Okay, I guess I ought to meet this Genii spy then, and see if he really is for real about this. Maybe he might even know some tactics about how his former comrades will be coming after us," John said, chuckling softly to himself. "Because I sure as hell know _this _–" with that, he indicated the bloodied, bullet-riddled corpse lying sprawled out at their feet "-isn't gonna be the end of it…"

# A #

The Genii spy's name was Oskar, and he was a tall, lanky man of indeterminable age. A strangely enigmatic character, with eyes that glimmered with an inner light that was hard to gauge, Oskar was quite obviously a highly intelligent, calculating individual. John felt as if he was being stripped away layer by layer under those cold, steady, intense eyes, as though the Genii's gaze was stripping him down, dissecting him, with ease…

It was wholly unnerving for the Lieutenant Colonel.

He had a soft, almost raspy voice, which made it difficult for Sheppard to catch all of the other man's words unless he strained himself to hear. "I heard the commotion from the other end of the house, Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard. I hope you and Teyla Emmagan are fine…"

John glanced over at Teyla, who was standing slightly behind the Genii and near to a doorway – she shrugged her shoulders almost apologetically. So she had told him a little of what was to come, including some information about him… fine, Sheppard knew he could work with that. It just made things slightly more difficult but then, this was never going to be a cakewalk to begin with.

"Oh yeah, we're quite alright… Oskar, is it?" The Genii nodded, with a slight twist of his lips that could almost have been viewed of as a smile. "It seems the Genii have gotten a little antsy with you, my friend. They've sent one of their ice-maidens out to try and take you down – and kill us as well, so it seemed. Well, she's no more. We just want to know first if there are more besides her out there that we've gotta watch out for."

Oskar sat there on the stool across the table from Sheppard for a short moment, thinking. Then he looked up into John's eyes. "Is the body nearby? With all the gear she had been carrying when she was shot?"

"Yes we brought her in a few minutes ago."

"Then let me see her," Oskar said, "and I will tell you if she was operating alone, or was a vanguard to a larger Strike Force."

# A #

In another section of the three-storey house, the dead body of the Genii sniper that had almost succeeded in killing Lt Colonel Sheppard and Teyla Emmagan had been laid out across a large oak-wood table. The dead soldier had been left in her tattered Gizan disguise that mostly concealed, but didn't quite manage hide the entire Genii military uniform underneath.

Malden, the Athosian merchant trader who had originally been contacted by the Genii intelligence operative to sound out a possible defection, was going through the kit that the deceased warrior had been equipped with. He looked up when Teyla, John and Oskar entered the room, and nodded to them respectfully.

"Have you found anything of importance, Malden?" Teyla Emmagan asked her companion.

"No, I am afraid not… it just seems like a regular batch of Genii infantry hardware and weaponry," the trader replied. He knew a little more about the Genii than most of the Athosians, as he had contacts amongst some of the powerful race's allies, on a number of worlds throughout Pegasus, and had a rudimentary knowledge of almost every aspect of their primary technologies.

Oskar moved forward, towards the table with the female Genii corpse lying across its surface. He had a bland, expressionless look to him, but his eyes were alive with inner radiance, as he reached out with one hand to pull away the flap of cloth that covered the dead woman's left breast.

There, on the front of her Genii military uniform right over her heart, was a little badge made out of a strange, smooth black mineral – a shield, with a lightning-bolt crossing through it, from the upper right side down to the lower left. Oskar looked at the badge for the longest time, and then turned away. He glanced up at John Sheppard at last.

"Colonel, we don't have to fear any more Genii for a while – this is one of the Order. An assassin," Oskar said by way of elaboration. "They always operate alone, and usually report directly to a Grand Master. In this case, I believe this woman would have answered to Cowen. He is the one that would realize first that I wish to turn against the Genii, that I want to defect to your side of the equation – and Cowen can never allow this, or he would fall by the wayside like so many other disgraced Genii leaders before him."

"So this is _political_?" Sheppard asked, incredulous. He was starting to see just what Oskar was trying to achieve, and he could hardly believe the manner in which he was going about it… the extremities he was employing to see the job done. "This entire defection? You want to help us so that you can bring about Chief Cowen's downfall?"

"That might seem like an unbelievable reason to betray my countrymen, Colonel Sheppard, but you must understand my reasoning before you condemn me," the defector replied. "Cowen is hell-bent on striking out against the Wraith with whatever little advantage we have managed to create for ourselves over the centuries. Because of the fact that the Wraith are now on the move, culling worlds across the galaxy and awakening in numbers that are unsustainable over time, the Genii High Council cannot hope to deliver anything near the decisive blow against our common enemy that Cowen dreams of. He is leading my people to their doom, but I am determined to do whatever is necessary to see to it that this does not come to pass."

He seemed to speak with strength and determination, every word that he spoke echoing with the resonance of truth – at least, that was the impression cast upon John Sheppard. The Colonel looked over at the body of the Genii woman, the assassin that had been sent, so it seemed now, to kill them all by the orders of Chief Cowen. He wondered how many more would come through after them next…

John did not doubt that they would come, though, and soon. There wouldn't be a shelter they could take refuge in on this entire planet that the Genii killers would not track them to.

The Colonel was forced to make a major decision. But now, after coming so close to death and having met the Genii operative, and having shared a few brief words with the man, the decision was much easier to make…

# A #

_On the outer edge of Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Primary, secondary and auxiliary systems all over the vessel had been devastated by the electromagnetic pulse – and that was definitely what it was, Rodney McKay confirmed, by the reports he got from many on the bridge of the _Daedalus _who had been able to monitor readings coming from the wave of energy just before it swept over their battle-cruiser, and did its deadly damage to their electronics.

He was half-jammed underneath a massive super-computer conduit near the back of the spacecraft's huge bridge, rummaging through copper wires and microchip processors in an unhatched compartment that opened into the innards of the conduit.

McKay was trying to remove all the fried, burnt-out circuitry and replace it with new parts – but so much of the original, _highly _complex console had been irreparably damaged that the repair-job would take hours.

He was already well on the way to getting this computer console back up and running, and with that console operating again, McKay had _a chance_ to get some auxiliary systems rebooted and functional…

"How is it going in there, Dr McKay?" Colonel Caldwell's voice drifted up to Rodney's ears, as he reached out with all his strength, stretching his right arm as far out as he possibly could, to pry the last of the burnt microchips out of its socket.

"It's going real fine, Colonel!" Rodney shouted back, his voice laced with enough sarcasm to get across his _incredible _displeasure. This was a job McKay knew he should never have had to do… if only those who mattered had listened to him in the first place. "_Real_ fine…"

"Well, please move along as fast as you possibly can, doctor. We all want to get moving again as soon as possible, and get enough functions back up and running so that we can plot a hyperspace jump back to Atlantis."

McKay had to literally _chomp_ down on his lower lip to stop himself from launching back at Caldwell with a verbal tirade of insults and abuse. He _KNEW _the stakes just as well as the Colonel did, if not better, and _WAS _doing the best job he could, as fast as he could do it, already… there was no need for the continued haggling and harassment.

This was a monumental stuff-up on the part of the military men here, regardless. It was fortunate for them all that he was here to get them all out of this mess… at least, that's what McKay thought about it all.

# A #

Two hours later, and auxiliary systems were running through one-third of the vessel. Repair and medical teams were moving throughout the _Daedalus_ pretty much at ease, despite the loss in power for most systems – this was due to all the emergency hatches and crawl-spaces built into the design of the battle-cruiser. This stroke of designing genius was really coming into its own in this crisis, and Colonel Steven Caldwell offered up a silent prayer to the man or woman who'd seen to that nice little addition.

Thank God for small miracles…

McKay was doing wonders for the repair effort, despite the fact that he was more snappy and narcissistic than ever.

Having to do major repairs and rebooting key computer-systems, because of a danger he had _warned _the command echelon about well in advance of the EMP strike… it was really grating on the good doctor, but still he was buckling under the workload and doing his jobs.

Caldwell had to admit, he was impressed. But still, he knew that he'd made a critical error in this case, had allowed his greed and ambition put the _Daedalus _and its crew at extreme risk… McKay had warned him of a danger but he had dismissed the scientist outright, when instead he should have listened to him, given the man a chance to explain himself.

Ah, enough of that. Now was not the time for self-recriminations. They had to get a few more systems operational, and then steer this hunk-o-junk back home…

# A #

External sensors were going to come back online, finally… Rodney had been fiddling around with this sub-system for about twenty minutes now, thinking that they would be a pretty easy function to get back after replacing a couple of fried circuits and doing a full system-reboot. But he was wrong; everything that could go wrong _did _go wrong.

Still, Dr McKay was not having a very good day, and he sure as hell wasn't about to give up and turn tail just because a stupid, no-good-for-nothing primary sub-system like the external sensors were being finicky!

"Yeah, there we go, darlin'… got ya!" Rodney exclaimed, leaping away from the wires and circuits he was fiddling with as the big black monitor in front of him, dormant for so many hours thanks to the energy weapon's strike, flickered back to life. Dr McKay moved in to see what the sensor arrays were picking up – he was glad, too, that they themselves seemed quite unaffected by the strike.

Rodney let his eyes sweep over the plotted-out, two dimensional representation of the ship's immediate environs -

- and, a second later, started to step back away from the screen, his face creased with concern, confusion… and _fear_.

He seriously had _no _idea whatsoever that they were in such a huge mess. Major Edward Norris noticed McKay's stricken state, and moved over to him to check out the situation. Rodney didn't even bother speaking – he simply pointed to the external sensors console. Norris went over to it to see everything for himself.

And soon enough, he too came back to stand with McKay, his face ashen-white. They were all in a real ugly situation, alright – unless the _Daedalus _got moving, quick-smart, things were going to go from bad to worse in a real big hurry.

Around them, quite a distance apart in space but not really all that far with hyperdrive engines, were four Wraith cruisers… they too were listing through space, most likely struck down by the same EMP pulse-weapon that had devastated their ship.

But if they were to get the drop on them in this precarious situation… McKay didn't like their chances of fighting it out against the Wraith with the _Daedalus'_ functions so critically depleted.

Suddenly, the Canadian caught something on the monitor that gave him pause. He moved forward again, and peered down at the screen for the longest time. Norris soon joined him. "Are they…?" the Major asked, hardly believing his own eyes.

"Yes they are…" McKay replied softly. "Puddle Jumpers." There were about five of them, shooting up from the surface of the planet that had been the origin of the 'Ancient' distress beacon signal.

"It must be help, from Atlantis!" Norris exclaimed. He spun around to look back at Caldwell, who was getting up from his command chair and coming forward to see what the commotion was all about, his eyes bulging with glee at the prospect of getting some desperately-needed support.

"No, Major, I really don't think so…" Rodney replied softly. There was no way the expedition would have known they were in trouble, let alone where they were on their route back to Atlantis. No, this was something else… something that made the scientist's stomach knot up in dread. "I don't think these are our boys at all. In fact, I think everything's just got a _whole_ lot worse."


	6. Chapter Five

**CHAPTER FIVE**

_The city of Atlantis,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Dr Elizabeth Weir strode into the command centre above the Gate Room, and looked over at the technician who was sitting at the laptop computer that acted as an interface to the Stargate's iris-control.

There was an established, incoming wormhole connection to their Gate from off-world, but the technician at the main controls to the iris had not lowered the energy-barrier that protected their Stargate from unauthorized personnel yet – he hadn't yet received an I.D.C., an electronic identification code that would verify that the incoming traveller or travellers were indeed people they wished to allow come into the city.

"Nothing yet?" Weir asked. If there was no I.D.C. data-stream sent, then the iris would stay up, and any person or object would be destroyed instantly upon attempting to cross through the event-horizon and reintegrate on the other side of the Gate. The object or person would be reincorporated on the other side of the Stargate, only to slam straight into the energy-barrier that protected the city's Gate and be instantly destroyed.

"No ma'am, I haven't received an I.D.C., and the three teams currently off-world are not scheduled to make any contact with us or return through the gate for at least 24 hours," the Gate operator replied. He looked over at Weir, waiting for any lead she would give, any instructions for him to follow…

"Let's give it a little more time…"

Suddenly, just as Weir trailed off, the I.D.C. signal came in – it was Lt Colonel Sheppard.

"Lower the iris!" Elizabeth ordered immediately. The Gate technician typed in a quick command, and the energy-shield dropped down.

A few seconds later, John, Teyla Emmagan, the Athosian merchantman, Malden, and the Genii spy Oskar all came staggering through the Gate's watery, slightly displaced event-horizon. Sheppard had his P-90 rifle trained back towards the Stargate's rippling wormhole, his finger resting lightly back on the trigger-guard.

Dr Weir shouted to the technician to put the iris back up into place as she raced down the stairs and ran across the floor of the Gate Room to meet with the incoming travellers; and he did just that, shielding them all from anyone or anything else that would come through the Gate after Sheppard and his people. Just a few moments later, though, the connection with the other planet shut down and there was no more need for concern.

"John, Teyla… Malden," Weir said by way of greeting, noting the three people she knew. "And you, sir, I take it, am the Genii intelligence operative who wishes to defect to us… am I correct?"

"Yes you are, Dr Weir. My name is Oskar." He offered her his right hand to shake, the picture of sincerity and warmth. Weir took it, shook the Genii's hand firmly, smiled into his eyes… "I'm sure we can come to quite an amicable arrangement, that will suit all of our interests perfectly."

"I very much hope so, Oskar…" Elizabeth replied. She turned slightly to John after finishing up the handshake, tilted her head to the side inquiringly. "We weren't expecting to hear from you for another 24 hours, John… let alone have you all come back here so soon…?"

What was left unsaid was the obvious – entire point of the mission was to verify the validity of this Genii and his story _off-world_, not have a potentially very dangerous adversary in Atlantis…

"Well, we ran into a little bit of a snag…"

Weir looked over to one of the Special Forces soldiers on sentry-duty in the Gate Room. She waved the big, burly Spaniard over. "Corporal, see to it that this gentleman is shown to one of the VIP guest quarters… and see to it that a guard is posted outside his door at all times." Elizabeth looked to Oskar, and asked, "I hope you don't object?"

"No Doctor, not at all, in understand the precaution, and would do the very same thing in your position," the Genii replied.

"That's good then." Oskar followed the armed soldier off through one of the adjourning hallways to find some temporary quarters that would be suitable for him. Weir turned to face Teyla, John and Malden. "Okay then, let's go to my office for a full debriefing… I want to know exactly what happened out there."

# A #

_Onboard the lead Puddle Jumper, the outer edge of Sector 1146,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Commander Acastus Kolya was not a pilot, but by what he was told by the man currently at the controls of the Ancestors' flying spacecraft, and others besides, it was far more instinctual to control this vessel than it was about any great skill… still, he had decided from a very early point in the operation to leave this stage of things to somebody else, more capable with these things than he was. And now, he was quite glad indeed about his decision.

Kolya had saved this final masterstroke to the last moment, so that when the blow came to his enemies it would be delivered swiftly, and from an overwhelming point of advantage.

No mercy, no remorse, no regrets… the Commander was determined to bring his foes to bear this time, without fail, and with the technology of the Ancients his to control – at least to a certain degree – it was well within his grasp to sweep all his opponents aside with impunity.

The rear compartment of the small, box-like spacecraft were jammed full of Genii soldiers, armed to the teeth with the best weaponry their people could manufacture.

Kolya had planned this entire phase of the mission down to the smallest detail – it a point of extreme risk, so he knew he could leave nothing at all to chance. It was simple in its scope, yet brutally effective because of it…

Out of his formation of five Ancestor spacecraft, – found on a world halfway across the galaxy over four years ago, but made to operate thanks to the sheer will and tenacity of Kayne – they would each target a specific enemy vessel to destroy.

The other four craft had the Wraith star-ships to annihilate – Kolya and his team were going to go for the human battle-cruiser, and he had every intention of _boarding _the vessel with his troops, not obliterating it like they were going to destroy all of the Wraith ships.

It should be a totally one-sided affair, with the enemy vessels all so hopelessly stricken thanks to the initial EMP strike.

"Ten minutes out from our target, Commander," the pilot stated. The vessel they were in screamed through the thick black void of space at an incredible speed, while the rest of their formation split away, each craft heading off in its own direction towards its own target…

It was time for war. It was time, Kolya thought with a childishly gleeful grin, to finally make his enemies pay… he would _not_ be made a fool of again!

Not this time!

# A #

_The outer edge of Sector 1146,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Like Kolya's Puddle Jumper (a reference that Colonel Sheppard and the Atlantis expedition would have understood, but not the Genii), the other four ships were all loaded with Genii troopers – they all had orders to converge on the Atlantean battle-cruiser and join in the boarding operation, as soon as their primary targets had been destroyed.

The men, and one woman, who flew the four Jumpers piloted their vessels with practiced self-assurance. They had only been training in the spacecraft over just a few months, but the direct interface between their own minds and the controls, allowing their will to be transferred to immediate action, made it all quite simple.

Each vessel came swooping in towards their independent target.

Wraith cruisers, when compared with the Puddle Jumpers the Genii were using, loomed over the smaller vessels with an ominous presence that was hard to shake. The pilots were all flying their ships without the cloak-feature activated, so the Wraith could see and detect them all, supposedly… if their sensors had still been active.

No weapons-fire whatsoever swept over their vessels, and no Wraith darts were launched from the ships' fighter-bays to intercept them. All four Wraith cruisers seemed completely oblivious to their presence…

The Genii pilots, as one, did not hesitate when they had the opportunity to fire, once the Wraith ships were within their weapons-range. With their minds, they commanded their vessels to launch two drone-weapons apiece at their selected targets.

The fiery, ultra-sonic heavy ordinance rounds shot out of the weapons-pods that retracted down from the undersides of the Ancient space-fighters, and streaked away from their mother-ships at astronomical speeds, hurdling straight towards their hapless targets like burning little comets…

The Wraith probably never knew the danger they were, as they didn't put up any kind of fight to speak of. They had been completely blinded, so it seemed, by the initial energy strike the Genii had unleashed from the planet so far away, and now the Puddle Jumpers were going to finish the job and destroy them all…

Hundreds of Wraith killed on each cruiser – the biggest strike against the enemy of all humans in the Pegasus Galaxy the Genii had ever accomplished. It was a momentous moment in their peoples' illustrious history.

The drones streaked in on their targets, punched right on through each Wraith cruiser in their turn, and detonated deep inside the vessels once they'd carved their destructive path through enough of the star-ships, causing devastating explosions to rip through the huge battle-cruisers as they were effectively cut in half by the assault.

The Ancient weapons had blown massive sections of all four Wraith vessels away from the main sections of the cruisers, and entire floors of the ships were being torn apart as the irreparable devastation compounded upon itself, spreading out at an incredible rate. Huge portions of the stricken vessels were being ripped away, as the damaged cruisers quickly succumbed to their mortal injuries while they floated through space, dying slow, prolonged deaths.

The Genii watched on through the front windshields of the Jumpers, flying alongside the Wraith ships, getting in real close to see the enemy vessels up close – the men and women savoured the kills, cherishing every moment of their victory. It was the first, they all hoped, of many more to come…

Then, they all turned back towards the lead spacecraft, still heading towards the only enemy vessel still remaining in the entire solar system – it was time to get down to the bloody end of this.

The four Puddle Jumpers converged at a certain position in space, then carried on in formation after Kolya's spacecraft, towards their glorious prize, the stricken Atlantean battle-cruiser.

A hard fight lay in the immediate future, but then, each and every Genii soldier knew there was no force in Pegasus tougher, or more experience in the many arts of combat, then they were…

# A #

_On the outer edge of Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

"Well, that was… umph, very effective," Colonel Calwell muttered, seemingly to no one in particular. Rodney McKay glanced over at the man with a look of pure loathing twisting across his face. Interesting? _Interesting…?_

My Lord, the Doctor thought to himself with bile churning up in the back of his throat, I'm going to die right here and now, because these imbeciles wouldn't listen to me when it mattered most…

And Calwell continued to make an ass of himself!

What the Colonel was referring to was the ease in which the four Puddle Jumpers, having broken their formation to go after the four helpless, stricken Wraith cruisers, had managed to destroy the usually quite formidable vessels.

They had all been obliterated, and now the sensors onboard the _Daedalus _were picking up the clouds of debris that had just moments before been Wraith warships. It had at least taken the possible threat the Wraith had posed out of the equation – but the direct danger from the Jumpers, now that was something else entirely.

Because no one really believed these ships were from Atlantis, coming to get them home. They didn't really know who they were dealing with, including Dr McKay, but the crew of the _Daedalus_ were now well past the point of believing in the bright, positive scenario – they'd been screwed around with too much.

"Well, they do have drones in the weapons-pods of those Jumpers, at least we know that much now – and we already know just how effective drone weapons are!" McKay snapped back dismissively. He was running out of patience with ignorance a lot quicker than normal, under this pressure-cooker situation. "Now, we have to get some X-302s out there, at least give them some kind of fight if it comes to that… it should be possible to reroute much of the minimal amount of power I've been able to get back to the shields in the fighter-bay. Major Norris, do you think you can get some pilots into those space-fighters, in about five minutes?"

"I'll damn well try," the Major replied, standing up and moving at a rush towards the nearest door.

"Good," McKay shouted after him, "because that's about as long as we've got until that lead Puddle Jumper is within drone weapon range of us."

With that, Norris raced through the doorway and down one of the hallways, towards the nearest gate-hatch that would get him into the network of crawlspaces that ran throughout the entire vessel.

Rodney then looked to Caldwell. "Colonel, I really hope to God those Puddle Jumpers _are_ ours, by some miracle or chance of fate. Because even with our entire squadron of X-302s, it will probably be a pretty one-sided dogfight if they have to go up against five Puddle Jumpers."

"Well, what else can we do then?" the Colonel asked, looking at the scientist with a look of fear on his face akin to that of a child, scared, frightened, and way out of his league…

"Nothing, Colonel, nothing at all… except _fight_, if it comes to that. Fight _as hard as we damn well can!"_

Out of the corner of his eye, McKay caught Ronon Dex looking at him strangely. He turned to look at the big, massive fighter, and saw Dex smile at him slightly, his eyes sparkling with warmth.

Ronon had a look of… _what_ was that look? _Respect?_ Yes it was. He had a look of respect plastered all over his face, for the way he was being strong, commanding, and was not allowing himself to give into his despair. At least, that was what Rodney thought Dex was proud of.

He didn't really deserve that, not honestly. Because deep down inside, Dr Rodney McKay had little doubt at all that he was the most terrified man onboard the _Daedalus_.


	7. Chapter Six

**CHAPTER SIX**

_On the outer edge of Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

The fighter-bay (a couple of sections below the bridge, and set much further back within the _Daedalus' _central structure) was jammed full of X-302 space-fighters, along various kinds of equipment and armaments that would give them their combat-ready edge.

A purely human-built design, borrowing heavily from Goa'uld death glider technology and aerodynamics, the X-302s were the second, more successful conversion of the Earth fighter aircraft in space. The dismal failure of their one attempt to make a hybrid of a downed Goa'uld death glider convinced the powers that be that it was better to work on their own, complete version of space-fighter, not take bits and pieces from alien craft, that could just pose more danger than it was worth.

They looked sleek, mean, and could fly like a bat-outta-hell. With a complement of four medium-ranged ballistic missiles and two long-ranged missiles, as well as Goa'uld-type 'bolt energy' weaponry for close-in fire, the X-302s were designed to battle other space-fighter classes. They could operate just as effectively in space or in the upper-atmosphere of a habitable world – either-or, they were still mighty hard-hitting monsters, definitely not a calibre of spacecraft to be taken lightly.

Major Edward Norris had gotten all the pilots and support personnel fired up and ready to do their duties; now he stood back out of the way as all the professionals went about their assigned jobs, doing the work they were paid for with the calm, precise skill he could always expect from those who were a part of the Air Force cadre.

He glanced down at his watch, and saw again that it wasn't working. It had been frozen by the EMP shockwave, just like every other piece of electronics that had been functioning at the time of the strike – Norris had known this, but he'd just forgotten about it. With a disgusted sigh, he unclipped the watch and threw the useless object into a rubbish bin nearby, then turned his full focus back to the literal hive of activity that was going on all around him, all across the wide open fighter-bay.

They must have only a matter of minutes left, Norris thought ruefully to himself. This was taking too long! They had to get the fighters out there, _now!_

# A #

Major Norris was close in his reckoning when he thought they only had a couple of minutes to go – but in fact, they had 30 seconds until the lead Jumper was within drone weapons range of their ship.

Then, if their intentions were hostile and the oncoming Ancient spacecraft was doing to destroy them, they could launch their drone assault upon them from a safe distance away, and there would be _nothing _any of them onboard the _Daedalus _could do to stop it.

Dr Rodney McKay was slowly winning the battle to restore more of the battle-cruiser's key secondary components, but the primary functions of the vessel, like helm control, engines, as well as offensive and defensive weaponry, were all stubbornly inactive.

Thanks largely to a venerable horde of technicians and engineers now at McKay's command, he was able to get some major work accomplished all over the ship, and some systems were being restored – but not enough to make anything they _really needed _to come online and operate properly.

The Puddle Jumpers all kept on coming, with the lead Jumper at least three minutes ahead of the others and almost within drone weapon range of their stricken vessel. It was now coming down to the finish-line – either in a few moments, a devastating drone attack would be launched against them all and they'd be obliterated, just like the Wraith cruisers were… or not.

"Those X-302s should be out there, _right now!"_ Dr McKay boomed, looking across at Colonel Caldwell with an almost reproachful look, as if it was _his _fault that the space-fighters were not shooting out of the fighter-bay at that moment on an intercept course to meet the lead Jumper, and if need be, engage it in combat… "We've only got _10 seconds_ until they can fire upon us!"

Rodney tried to calculate in his head just how far the X-302s would have to travel to get within weapons-range with their ballistic missiles to take out that lead Jumper… and he didn't think they had a chance.

Not if the Puddle Jumper fired on them first.

The seconds ticked down, ever so slowly for those on the command bridge of the _Daedalus_. Two X-302 fighters shot out of the fighter-bay and streaked away from the battle-cruiser – the crew on the bridge could see the tiny little craft rocketing away into the depths of space, barrelling after the first of the five incoming Jumpers. McKay was glad that at least a couple of X-302s were finally airborne…

But then, the Jumper crossed the threshold… finally it was within range to fire upon the vessel with its drone weapons. And almost immediately, the Puddle Jumper's intentions were revealed to them all.

Two drones were fired from out of the weapons-pods underneath the oncoming vessel, and streaked away at an astronomical speed towards the two X-302 fighters sent to intercept the Jumper. It was now unmistakable – the Jumpers were hostile, as they'd opened fire on spacecraft that were obviously human-designed, and this was going to get real bad for everyone on the _Daedalus_ soon enough.

# A #

_The outer edge of Sector 1146,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

The two drones covered the distance between the Puddle Jumper that had fired them and the oncoming X-302 fighters with incredible speed, and the pilots onboard both of the spacecraft from Earth banked and pitched their vessels all over the place, trying desperately to manoeuvre themselves out of the line of fire…

But to no avail – the drones, due to their Ancient technology, corrected themselves fluidly as they continued to bore in on their targets, making minute changes to their direction and speed up to the very moment of impact with the human-piloted space-fighters. The subsequent explosions obliterated both of the X-302s, along with the two men who had been at the controls the vessels.

The Puddle Jumper just swept on by the wreckage of the two spacecraft, bearing down upon the battle-cruiser with ruthless, relentless determination.

Another drone was lowered down out of one of the weapons-pods, lit up under its own energy, and shot screaming away from the Jumper at an unbelievable hyper-velocity. The drone tore through the distance between its own vessel and the Atlantean warship in mere moments… and soon enough, it made its indelible, appalling mark upon the _Daedalus_.

# A #

_On the outer edge of Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

The rest of the X-302s were about to launch out of the fighter-bay after the initial two spacecraft – Major Ed Norris watched on proudly as the vessels all manoeuvred themselves into position, and saw the engines kick over…

The pilots started up their thrusters as the navigators (something the first two X-302s had lacked, in their haste to get out there and into the fight no navigators had been able to join them in time) all went through the last of their pre-flight checks, making sure in their rush no obvious mistakes had been made. It might be time to get into some serious dog-fighting, yes, but they would _not _be making any stupid, foolish rookie mistakes.

The Asgard-designed shielding that kept the fighter-bay protected from the void of space outside the ship rippled with energy, as it kept back the vicious environment of the stars and the cosmos… none of them ever saw the bright little comet-like drone weapon as it streaked in on them, flying _straight towards their very position on the Daedalus!_

The Asgard shield was _NOT_ designed to withstand a drone weapon's firepower – a weapon of the Ancients. The devastating explosion that resulted from the drone's impact with the shield-cover _tore right through_ the closed confines of the fighter-bay.

X-302 fighters were engulfed in flames or simply burst apart from the intense heat, as their plasma drives overloaded or their missile loads were cooked off. Personnel and equipment were obliterated from the intensity of the explosions, or sucked out into the void of space because the shield that had protected this portion of the vessel from such dangers had now been removed.

The last thing Major Edward Norris, the Tactical Officer aboard the _USS Daedalus_, saw before he too was vaporized by the supernova-like ferocity of the explosions, was a virtual _WALL _of flame racing through the fighter-bay towards him. And the last thoughts that he had were of his wife and children back home on Earth… and the rest of the crew of the _Daedalus_.

He hoped and prayed that Dr McKay would help steer them all back on track, and get the rest of them back into the fight…

Then, Norris thought, and saw, nothing else ever again, as the fireball engulfed him and his body was almost instantly atomised.

# A #

"The fighter-bay…" one of the junior officers reported breathlessly as he came sprinting into the room from the adjourning hallway, "it was struck by the drone weapon, completely destroyed that entire sector of the ship. Automated containment protocols were active, as that entire section of the vessel has been sealed off because of the breach… in atmosphere – when the bay's shield went down from the strike."

The entire battle-cruiser was still rocking slightly from the savage impact of the drone weapon – now they knew just where the device had struck, but not the extent of the damage. Still, Dr McKay knew just how powerful drone weapons were. He expected that a sizable portion of the _Daedalus _had been carved away by the Ancient device's detonation, and that every last person in that entire section of the ship was already dead… the casualty rate was going to be enormous.

Rodney snapped himself out of the stupor he found himself falling into, and looked over the sensor console again, concentrating, trying to gauge just _what_ it was these unknown foes had in store for them.

He didn't actually think they planned to destroy the ship outright anymore – there had only been one drone attack so far on them directly, on the section of the vessel that the X-302 fighters had been launched from. No. Rodney McKay got the sinking feeling that they were actually planning on _storming_ their ship, and trying to take it by force of arms…

Just who in the hell were they dealing with here? McKay wondered.

# A #

_Onboard the lead Puddle Jumper, on the outer edge of Sector 1146,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

The pilot had done his duty well to get them safely to this point – Kolya told him so, and the young Genii beamed with warm, honest pride at the compliment. Then, the Commander turned to his small, robust skirmisher team, and looked over every man and woman in the tightly-packed rear compartment in turn.

He was immensely proud of every single member of this assault team, chosen out of the larger Strike Force Kolya led because of their combat experience, and dogged determination to succeed at all costs in meeting their objectives. There was no other group of Genii Acastus Kolya would have wanted to go to war with.

"Genii, we are going into combat! And let me tell you now, _not all of you will live through this day!"_ Acastus began. "But know this – your bravery and sacrifice, if made in honourable battle with the enemy, will live on through the ages. We have struck a mighty blow against the Wraith on this day, the most savage blow our people have ever delivered against the scourge of the Pegasus Galaxy! You are all already legends upon the Genii people – now let us etch our name into the stones by taking our glorious prize, and casting our foes down without mercy!"

The roar that the Genii shock-troopers gave back to Commander Kolya because of his stirring words was deafeningly loud, in the confined space of their spacecraft. Acastus grinned broadly at them all, as he checked his auto-pistol and ammo cartridges, made sure his grenades were securely clasped to the belt he wore round his waist, and his combat knife was sheathed in its scabbard…

They were almost upon their target. It was almost time to take their prize.

# A #

_On the outer edge of Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

"They're _landing_ on top of us!" McKay shouted, looking over at Colonel Caldwell, Ronon Dex, and the rest of the bridge crew with incredulous wonder. _"I think they're going to try boarding the ship, and taking control of the Daedalus by force!"_

"No… really? That's what you believe their plan is?" the Colonel asked, finding it quite hard to accept.

"Yes that has to be it – it's the only reason we're all still alive and kicking right now," Rodney said, trying very hard to keep his voice level and at a reasonable timbre. He was _not _going to let the situation overwhelm him, no way no how. "That Puddle Jumper out there is of _ANCIENT _design. We have a few of our own Jumpers back at Atlantis, as you're quite aware, Colonel, and you have to understand this – they are _WAY_ the hell beyond anything we have at our disposal. That one Jumper could easily destroy the _Daedalus _with just a couple of drones travelling at hyper-velocity, as we saw with the Wraith cruisers. So the fact that we are still here right now, and that the Jumper is setting down _as I speak_ on some section of the vessel's outer hull, lends credence to my theory that the people responsible for all this are going board us and fight for control."

"Okay that's fine…" Caldwell said. "Now that we might actually have an enemy to fight, on something like equal terms, I say we give these bastards some payback! I want fire-teams assembled to repel boarders on all levels, and sweeper-teams to go through this entire ship from top to bottom – anything that doesn't have an SGC insignia, dies. Got it?"

Soon, orders were being carried out and commands bellowed all over the place, as the crew of the _Daedalus_ began to unlock weapons cabinets, and disperse with a vast assortment of guns and ammunition. Colonel Caldwell withdrew his Beretta handgun, and then passed McKay a handheld radio.

"Stay on the line with us, Doc, and let me know as soon as those other four Jumpers arrive," the Colonel commanded. He was now back in his element again, and Rodney was out of his – it was time to _fight_ these sneaky cretins. "I want to know _what_ they do and, if they try to land on the _Daedalus_ and unload some boarders, I want to know _where _the hell they do it!"

"I've got it," Rodney said back. He was glad that he could help, in the best way that he knew how – with his mind. "I'll stay right here and relay important information when it becomes necessary."

"Good – stay safe, McKay. We're going to get through this." Caldwell rushed off the bridge with most of the senior staff and crewmembers; they were all armed in some fashion or other with small-arms weapons. As Ronon was about to head out of the room after them, he turned to look back at Rodney McKay.

"You did well today, Doc – this wasn't your fault, and you've tried your very best to work a way out of it. For that, you've earned my respect."

And with that, the big man was gone through the doorway. He had his personal blaster pistol in one hand, and his great-sword hanging down in its scabbard from his left hip. Ronon was _DEATH _incarnate – Rodney had seen him fight, so he knew just how much trouble those boarders, whoever or whatever they were, would be in when they came across his long-haired companion.

"Thank-you," McKay whispered after Ronon Dex. He turned to look around the mostly-empty bridge, took in the sight of the two young officers left back to guard him, and sighed. Well, this was going to be one _very_ interesting hour…

# A #

The sweeper-team Ronon Dex commanded consisted of him, and four young Air Force technicians he doubted knew the business end of a gun even if they were staring down the depths of a barrel, looking death in the face – they were novices, in other words, kids barely out of school who would probably do more damage than good, and somehow get _HIM_ killed along the line.

Dex would have much preferred working alone…

The sound of metal being cut away echoed down the corridor, and Ronon Dex moved cautiously towards the noise – he made sure that his 'team' stayed well back behind him, and made as little noise as possible as he crept forward.

Round the last corner, and there it was… sparks were flying down from the roof, as someone was slicing through the reinforced metal panelling with a cutting-tool. They were almost done, too – Dex and his men just stood back and watched as the last of the metal was cut through, and the heavy slab fell to the ground below with a mighty _clang_.

"Intruders detected in my sector," Dex whispered softly into his handheld radio, and then immediately switched off the device before the hissing, cackling response gave away his position too early. Reinforcements would be quick to respond, despite the fact that he was now off-air.

The first soldier dropped straight down to the ground from the hole in the _Daedalus _– from the Puddle Jumper above, Ronon reckoned.

The boarder righted himself, swung his rifle up from where it had been pointed towards the ground, glanced quickly around his environs… and found himself looking straight down the barrel of the blaster of one cold customer, Ronon Dex.

A second later, the man was dead, his body flying back into the wall behind him – there was not much left of the trooper's head, just a bloody, gore-splattered mass of blood, bone and brains.

For a split-second, a head appeared in the shrouded opening in the roof. Ronon took a couple of pot-shots a the figure, a man, but missed his target. Dex quickly ducked away, as a _monstrous _amount of weapons-fire swept through the hallway, carving up the ground where he had been standing but a moment before…

These guys were quite annoyed, Dex reckoned, and laughed heartily. After all, he'd just taken out one of their own, and started up a whole lot of trouble with the first face-to-face kill of the entire episode. Ronon had absolutely no regrets about it, either.

It wasn't him who had started the fight.

# A #

One of the secondary functions Rodney McKay had been able to get operational again was the security camera network, and so he was able to punch in a relayed picture of the first round of action directly to a video-monitor up on the bridge.

And when he saw the first man to jump down from the breach in the ship's hull, saw what he had been dressed in and the weapons he'd been armed with, McKay felt like he was going to vomit.

Oh crap, not the _Genii_… after all the hell that they put him through every time the team ran into these people, Rodney would have been quite happy to have lived out the rest of his days never having heard from them ever again. But it didn't seem like he would be so lucky.

"Colonel Caldwell," he said over the handheld radio, "Ronon's made contact with the enemy, and has even managed to kill one of their troops. They're Genii, sir. This is very bad. These guys are extremely skilled fighters, and are dangerous as hell. Be careful."

# A #

_The city of Atlantis,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

The debriefing had been long, thorough, and very informative to Dr Elizabeth Weir. She was able to get the opinion from both Teyla Emmagan and her Athosian kinsman, Malden, that the Genii Oskar was worthy of further interview and verification, but seemed quite honest and cooperative. John Sheppard was a little less convinced about Oskar than the other two, but believed the intelligence operative might just prove to be a valued asset, _if_ the worth of what he had to offer was real and could be confirmed…

After the meeting was over, Lt Colonel Sheppard and Teyla Emmagan went down to one of the sparring rooms to practice John's blunt-force combat training, with a pair of wooden training clubs each as weapons.

Malden joined them both for a long while as a quiet, silent observer. He was so quiet and observant, that soon the two combatants forgot all about him as they duelled against each other intensely… and they did not even miss his presence when the Athosian slipped out of the room, making his way confidently through the hallways and corridors of Atlantis.

He knew how to move with purpose, with an air of drive and determination about him that seemed to indicate Malden had a place, a reason for being in that section of the city – people were less likely to question the presence of an Athosian striding around the place if it looked like he had somewhere to go. At least, that was Malden's reasoning, and for all intents and purposes it was proving to be a right assumption.

The 'guest quarters' where the Genii spy, Oskar, was staying in were quite easy to find – they were the ones Malden located with the armed Special Forces soldier standing outside the only entrance.

He waled right on by the trooper the first time, giving the young man a smile and a slight nod as he went. Then, ten minutes later on his way back past the same guard standing in front of the same door, the Athosian launched into action.

Malden flicked out a hidden dagger from underneath his clothing, and before the soldier at the door could notice it or react to the danger, he charged forward and plunged the blade deep into the man's neck. The trooper's eyes blanched wide open in horror, and he tried to struggle with the Athosian, attempted to wrest the knife out of Malden's grasp and pull the dagger out of his neck – to no avail, his assailant was just too strong and determined.

There was a great deal of blood pouring out of the deep wound – he had hit an artery with the strike, so that didn't help the situation much. Within thirty seconds, the SF was dead, and Malden let his body slump lifelessly to the ground by the doorway. He pulled the blade out of the man's ruined throat, and wiped the excess blood off on the dead soldier's uniform. Then Malden opened the door with a wave of his hand over the correct panel, picked up the dead body by lifting it up under the arms, and half-dragged, half-carried the corpse into the room beyond.

Oskar was sitting on a couch across the room from Malden as he came in, and looked up to see the Athosian dragging the dead sentry's body into the room. He hardly batted an eye.

"It was incredibly fortunate for us about that assassin of Cowen's, turning up the way she did…" the Genii said to the Athosian, as Malden handed over an auto-gun he had been allowed to carry within Atlantis. Oskar clicked back the hammer of the weapon, loading a round into the firing-breech. He was ready to perform his duty.

"Indeed it was. Commander Kolya did not expect you to make it into the city for at least a month, if at all," Malden replied. "Thanks to the Grand Master sending his killer after you, thinking that you were going to turn over vital secrets to the Atlanteans and not, in fact, sabotage their operations irreparably in the Pegasus Galaxy…"

He looked over at the Genii agent, at the man he had known for the better part of half his life – at his case officer, the intelligence operative who had recruited the Athosian so many years ago to spy for the Genii. Oskar gave him a broad grin in return.

"Well, we are both here now for Kolya and his troops. Let's do our duty," Oskar stated with grim determination. Leading the way, Malden moved back out into the corridor of the city, and Oskar followed close behind, his auto-gun up and at the ready to fire…

They headed straight for the ZPM Outlet Room – the heart of Atlantis, where its one fresh, fully-charged Zero Point Module resided, powering up the city from this key position. The men had every intention of destroying that Zero Point Module, and doing as much damage to the triangular console that housed the energy cells so that no other ZPMs could be placed there.

Malden and Oskar planned to strike at the very _heart_ of the city itself!


	8. Chapter Seven

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

_The city of Atlantis,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

John was positively _aching_ all over after another vicious wooden training-stick bout with Teyla Emmagan – his body would probably swell up with bruises over the coming days, but Sheppard appreciated the training. He was always trying to better himself as a fighter, and with the sparring with Teyla, John learnt that tactics and timing, as well as a healthy level of brutality and strength, went a long way towards victory…

Teyla was too sound, tactically, to be overcome – but Sheppard knew he was getting closer with every sparring session, and soon enough they would become quite evenly matched.

Colonel Sheppard hopped into the shower in his personal quarters in the city of Atlantis, and let the hot water wash over his entire body, slowly easing away the pain that was coursing through him from head to foot. He massaged out some of the more taut, swollen parts of his body, and let out a sharp gasp when something caught in his lower back and a stabbing knife of pain shot up his spine.

John gritted his teeth and turned around in the shower cubicle, letting the water strike him full in the back – now Teyla really had put him through the ringer today, Sheppard thought with a rueful little smirk, but then, that was good that she hadn't held anything back. He could only get better because of her toughness in their sparring combat.

Suddenly, there was a massive explosion somewhere deep within the bowels of Atlantis, that rocked through the entire structure of the city-starship. John was hurled back into the wall of his shower, and cried out involuntarily when his side slammed up against the unyielding wall – he was _ALREADY_ hurting enough, but now another bruise would probably be added to the collection.

The explosion – because that was what it was, John had absolutely no doubt – had been quite large… and by his reasoning, it was deep within the city, probably near the ZPM Output Room. A very vitally important part of Atlantis if every there was one, the Lieutenant Colonel thought grimly to himself as he staggered out of the shower cubicle and raced over to his clothes cupboard, to hurriedly put on some clothing.

Then he snatched up his P-90, a couple of full mags of ammo, and a handheld radio, and bolted out of his room at a full run, racing down the hallway as fast as his legs could carry him.

# A #

The door to the ZPM Outlet Room had been made of a reinforced metallic substance the Ancients used in much of their construction – it did not stand up well against the tiny little explosive charge that the Athosian, Malden, was able to attach onto the side of the panel, as it was one of the most concentrated detonation charges the Genii had ever managed to synthesise.

Oskar moved in first, with his auto-gun raised and ready to fire at any target on the other side of the breach. The Genii operative was tensed up, ready for immediate action, but found nothing to shoot so he moved quickly away from the doorway.

Malden entered the room behind Oskar… and almost instantly, _a stream of deadly high-velocity bullets smashed right into the wall right by Malden's left side!_

The Athosian spun straight around on his feet and looked back down the hallway, to see Lt Colonel John Sheppard thundering down the corridor straight towards them, his P-90 assault rifle raised up and its barrel smoking from recent use…

Malden leapt aside at the last moment, avoiding the next burst of weapons-fire by mere inches and just narrowly avoiding instant death. Oskar, the only one out of the two of them armed with a weapon, and also the best shot, as an experienced Genii intelligence agent, crept forward towards the door.

He pointed at Malden, and then indicated the triangular-shaped console in the centre of the ZPM Outlet Room – within which was the fully-charged ZPM that powered the entire city, the target of their sabotage operation. Malden, the one who had managed to bring the Genii-designed super-explosives into Atlantis, raced over to the triangular console and quickly started planting his tiny little charges.

Oskar stood right by the blasted-open door, and waited patiently for John Sheppard to make his move on the opening, to leap into the room – and make the last mistake of his life, crossing over the threshold right into the Genii spy's gun-sights.

The Genii almost felt sorry that he was about to kill Sheppard – despite the fact that he had only just met the man, he had heard that John was a brave, honourable warrior, worth his respect despite the fact that he was the enemy.

# A #

Sheppard edged closer to the breached doorway, staring through the blown-open section of the city and into the ZPM Outlet Room.

He had seen Malden ducking around behind the other side of the triangular power conduit, where the three ZPMs that could power the entire city were inserted, but had missed his opportunity to shoot the man for the few brief moments he had exposed himself. John didn't know where Oskar was, but he did not doubt that the Genii was in there as well, waiting for him to rush into the room after them, and get himself killed…

The first place John had gone to after he dressed and armed himself, racing out of his room at a full sprint, had been the temporary quarters where Oskar had been set up in – and there, he had found the bloodied body of the Sergeant that had been assigned to sentry-duty outside the Genii's door, having been killed by a deep knife wound to his throat.

John didn't know where Oskar had procured a bladed weapon from, or how he had managed to get so close to a trained Special Forces soldier, who would have been on the highest state of alert, to deliver such a blow. But he had, and that was all that really mattered – the Genii 'defector' had been a plant all along!

And now, he was going to cause some major chaos in Atlantis – unless he could be stopped, with whatever force was necessary.

As he had bolted down a number of corridors, and through doorways at a full gallop, Sheppard had spotted Malden, the Athosian merchantman, racing along ahead of him. And suddenly, it all made perfect sense!

The Genii spy, Oskar, had not been alone in this set-up; he had help, from Malden, _an Athosian!_

Teyla Emmagan was not going to be pleased.

# A #

Moving cautiously over to the left side of the blasted-out section of doorway, pushing himself back into the wall and sliding along til he was right by the opening, John aimed his P-90 into the murky semi-darkness, keeping his trigger-finger resting lightly back on the firing-catch.

He cursed himself at that moment for not picking up any flash-bang grenades – they would have proved wondrous for an assault of this nature, into a room that John did not know where the hostiles were located exactly.

Sheppard decided to move, right then and right now. He had to take the chance and just leap in there, or else the two saboteurs would be able to accomplish their task.

The Colonel took a deep breath, and leapt straight through the opening into the ZPM Outlet Room – and _straight into_ a murderous hail of bullets from Oskar's auto-gun!

# A #

_On the edge of Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Ronon smashed his fist right into the face of one young male Genii soldier, then lifted him up by his shoulders and hurled the slightly-concussed fighter bodily into a stack of heavy metal crates nearby. The man groaned when he impacted with the crates, and they tumbled down all around him, but Ronon Dex had not an ounce of pity for the soldier – he moved right on to the next combatant.

There were Genii all over the place… Rodney McKay had kept them all apprised of the locations of the other four Puddle Jumpers as they came in on the _Daedalus_, sweeping in and landing all over the hull of the battle-cruiser – but they had not managed to get any of the vessel's defensive weaponry operational in time to destroy any of the Jumpers as they travelled inbound.

And now, what had been a containable problem, with fewer than a dozen enemy troops to deal with, was now a much larger, more dangerous situation – they were now facing with over fifty Genii fighters boarding the ship from five separate breach-points… this had every chance of going the wrong way for the defenders, and Dex was more than aware of that fact.

A burst of weapons-fire from a crouching Genii soldier almost took off the top of Ronon's head as he paused in a doorway for just a moment, but the burly veteran had sensed the danger at the last moment, and ducked aside just before the first round zipped by.

He spun around on his feet and raised his blaster up to fire in one fluid motion – three shots of red energy burst out of the gun-barrel of his gun, and struck the Genii halfway across the room full in the chest. The soldier flew back off his feet and slammed right into the wall behind him, the three bolts of laser-fire having punched huge holes through his chest.

The Genii was killed instantly, and his lifeless body slid slowly down to the floor, a thick smear of blood marking his descent.

Bullets were flying all over the place, as both parties traded shots with one another, and the Genii boarders slowly made their moves further into the winding confines of the _Daedalus_.

Ronon Dex looked back towards the rest of the defensive line, further back down the corridor, and watched as, right before his very eyes, a Lieutenant from the vessel's Engineering division made a run from one point of cover to another… and got cut down in a murderous hail of enemy fire. The young man was pitched back off his feet, spinning around 180 degrees on the spot as he was virtually torn apart by the Genii gunfire, and dropped dead to the ground right on the spot.

They didn't have enough experienced, trained fighters onboard the _Daedalus_ – in all, the battle-cruiser had less than thirty Special Forces soldiers, including Ronon himself, and they were all being outclassed and outmanoeuvred by this determined assault force.

A couple of Genii troopers, a male and a female, made a rush for a SF soldier who'd somehow been cut off from the rest of the defensive line – Dex saw the blurred movement from out of the corner of his eye, and turned around to catch sight of the two enemy fighters dashing in low and fast towards the stranded soldier.

Ronon knew immediately that he had to act – the Genii were moving towards their target at quite a quick speed, and he was a good distance away from them all, but the battler in him was not about to just sit back and _let_ a team-mate, a fellow member of this expedition from Atlantis, get killed.

Crossing the distance between himself and the Genii at a full run, Ronon Dex made a flying leap through the air as the two enemy fighters made their move on the SF, crossing around to attack him from two separate directions simultaneously, and fired at them both with his blaster…

One of the blaster-shots hit the female trooper right in the face, an incredible shot for Ronon to make in midair – she dropped straight to the ground, most of her face having been blown away by the laser-blast, having been killed instantly.

The other Genii turned straight around to face Ronon, and opened fire with one of their rifle-weapons, unleashing a vicious torrent of bullets right at the big fighter as he came crashing hard onto the ground. Dex only _just_ managed to roll away as the rounds all slammed straight into the ground where he'd landed just moments before.

He had only avoided death by quick thinking and immediate action – _half a second later, and it would have been a different story entirely!_

After rolling a couple of times and coming to a sudden, halting stop, Dex raised his blaster up to fire at this dangerous threat… when suddenly, the left side of the Genii soldier's head _exploded_ in a crimson geyser of blood!

The Special Forces trooper, with a bullet through his right kneecap and everything, had managed to hobble around from behind the cover he had found for himself, lined up the enemy gunman with his Beretta handgun, and took the shot that had to be taken.

With an unbelievable level of courage and tenacity, the SF had gotten Ronon out of a really bad situation… Dex hadn't known whether or not he could have gotten a shot off at the Genii in time, before he in turn was cut down in a hail of bullets.

The young trooper (from a country called 'France', Ronon saw by the blue, white and red striped flag-insignia on his right shoulder – Lt Colonel Sheppard had been informing him a little about the multiculturalism of the Atlantis expedition) gave him a broad, cheeky little lop-sided grin – just before his throat exploded in a huge spray of blood, and he dropped to his knees right in front of Ronon, most of his neck having been blown away by a point-blank shot from behind.

The expression of bewilderment and horror on the soldier's face was heartbreaking, even to a toughened fighting-man such as Ronon Dex. He looked up from the dying man's face, hie entire body twitching with burning, incessant rage, to stare right into the eyes of the man he was determined, above everything else now in the entire universe, to kill with his own bare hands…

Ronon had no way of knowing it, but he was in fact sizing up Commander Acastus Kolya's Group Leader, Egan – the second-in-command of the entire Genii Strike Force.

His Genii foe was holding a smoking, smouldering auto-gun tightly in his right hand – the weapon he had used to do the murderous deed.

When he saw the look of anguish and vicious fury plastered across Ronon's face, the enemy simply smirked in contempt, and threw his handgun aside. Dex could not have been more pleased – the man knew what was coming, and in fact welcomed the fair, hand-to-hand combat.

"You just made the biggest mistake of your life…" Dex said coldly to his adversary, lacing every word that he spoke with brooding menace, "…and you're going to spend the last minute of your life regretting that mistake, before I finally do the both of us a service and kill you."

His foe did not say a word – he simply raised his fists up in preparation, and beckoned with his right hand for Dex to 'come and get it.'

# A #

Dr McKay did the best that he could to relay timely, accurate intelligence on the movements of the Genii throughout the ship's corridors and sections, using the visual data he was getting from all the security cameras spread out all over the place – that was, until the Genii realized that someone was getting good Intel on their advances, made the deduction that it was through the security cameras, and began to destroy the devices as they moved through the _Daedalus_.

Rodney caught a bone-chilling glimpse of the _very_ scary, dreadfully dangerous-looking Commander Acastus Kolya as he and a group of his troops made their way towards the Mess Hall… where Colonel Caldwell and a sizable force of his crewmembers were waiting, to meet the boarders with overwhelming force of arms.

The look on Kolya's face was… _horrifying_.

The Commander looked ruthlessly driven to succeed – he would probably kill his own son (if the man even had a son to speak of, that is) if it meant that he would succeed in taking over this ship.

Kolya raised his Genii rifle up in one smooth motion and fired at the security camera as he passed by, destroying it – and stopping McKay from watching the compliment of enemy troops moving down the corridor towards his colleagues.

Rodney raised the handheld radio up to his lips and clicked the TALK button. "Colonel, you've got a pretty large force of Genii inbound, coming in from Sector Five – and Commander Kolya himself is at the front!"

# A #

"Understood, Dr McKay," Caldwell replied grimly into the radio, and then quickly he glanced around his immediate environs. What he saw did not fill him with confidence…

Most of the men and women under his command in this section of the battle-cruiser were members of his crew – Air Force personnel, not ground-combat soldiers. There were five Special Forces men in the group, spread out along the defensive line as moral support, and for much-needed leadership reasons.

But this was not going to be good for them, if it became a prolonged, bloody, entrenched fight – a battle eventuality that probably suited the Genii more than it did the defending _Daedalus _force.

Kolya, the Colonel was sure, was a masterful tactician, and knew his command situation well. He was leading a smaller, more skilled and well-disciplined force in against poorly-trained, numerically superior defenders. If Acastus Kolya was as good as he was led to believe, Caldwell feared the Genii Commander would find a way to nullify the only thing his force had going for them – their numbers.

If he found a way to cancel out Caldwell's numerical advantage, Kolya would have gone a fair way towards winning this fight.

Rodney McKay had been an invaluable help before, watching the Genii moving throughout the ship and relaying their activities back to the defenders – now, Steven Caldwell would willingly have given his right foot to have some timely tactical intelligence on the movements and actions of the enemy force that was about to storm their Mess Hall.

He knew they were coming… he could almost _feel _their presence, and it was an offence to Colonel Caldwell's military sensibilities.

When they came at the defenders, the Genii came from three different directions – and they struck hard, sharply, and with ruthless vigour.

The Genii assault troops were like demons unleashed from the deepest pits of hell. They swept through the Mess Hall like a speeding, ravenous horde, blasting out an incredulous amount of weapons-fire, which swept through the defenders' lines with murderous efficiency.

It was like cutting down blades of grass… most of the crew just stood there half-out of cover, unbelieving that the Genii were so deadly efficient, and were riddled with bullets right there and then, without pity or remorse.

Colonel Steven Caldwell was splattered with the blood of a young Captain, who'd gotten struck by a half-burst of bullets from a Genii marksman from halfway across the killing grounds, and his mind shut down.

_He couldn't see… there was only red… it was a nightmare… death, everywhere… _

The Beretta handgun drooped down by his side, useless now, as Caldwell retreated in on himself. The sound of Rodney McKay's incessant voice, demanding to know if the Colonel was alright, if they were holding their own against the Genii attack, echoed through the room…

# A #

Most everyone in Colonel Caldwell's miserably doomed defensive force had killed by the Genii in the brutal fighting. A couple of the Special Forces soldiers, though, _had_ survived, and when they saw that most of the crew of the _Daedalus_ were dead, they lowered their weapons to the ground and raised their hands in surrender.

There was nowhere to run to, anyway – the Genii had come in from every direction at once, effectively sealing the defenders in the Mess Hall where they were slaughtered en masse.

Commander Kolya made his position quite clear on taking SFs prisoner right from the start – he shot both men in the head at point-blank range, execution-style. The soldiers hadn't stood a chance. They'd been unarmed, and had never seen the danger they were in til the last moment, looking down the barrel of the Commander's auto-gun…

When it was done, the Genii leader looked over to the enemy combatant standing amongst all the bodies of his fallen comrades, all glazed-over in the eyes and covered in the blood of his brethren, and he smiled in satisfaction.

This man had been shouting orders and beckoning about the place before Kolya had launched his brutal assault, and while his trap had sprung closed around his hapless victims, he had tried to lead his people in a fighting retreat – until, suddenly, he'd stopped moving, had just given up the fight right there out in the middle of the room.

The Genii knew what this was – his enemy was fatigued, battle-scarred. The screams of the wounded and moans of the dying did not seem to sit well in this man's soul. Kolya felt no pity for his adversary – he only felt glad, that now he had some kind of enemy leader in his custody.

He gave the order for the bald-headed, blood-splattered man to be hog-tied, and carried back to one of the spacecraft they had come onto the vessel in – Kolya would be taking back this man, for further 'discussions' at a later date.

One day soon, he planned to be standing again in the Gate Room of Atlantis… at the head of a massive, overwhelming Genii Strike Force.

But that was for another day… now, Commander Acastus Kolya planned to finish this operation, and take control of this _entire_ Atlantean battle-cruiser!


	9. Chapter Eight

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

_The city of Atlantis,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

_This was such a bad idea! _

The words, poetically simple yet accurate, tore through John Sheppard's mind with the force of a thunderclap from the very heavens above, deafening his senses. The thudding, numbing impact of one of Oskar's bullets slamming into his right shoulder rocked through the Colonel's entire body, and he was knocked severely to one side by the physics of the round striking his shoulder the way that it did.

But that probably saved his life though, as he avoided the next four shots, which would have hit him if he'd continued the dive through the opening the way he had. The fortune of being shot… it ended up _saving _Sheppard's life, taking that initial bullet to the shoulder.

He rolled along the floor as soon as he hit the ground, wincing as he went over his wounded shoulder, and came up with his P-90 rifle pointing _right at_ Oskar, the saboteur. The Genii operator moved his gun around as fast as he can to bring it to bear on Sheppard, but the American was far too quick on the uptake. He squeezed back on the trigger, unleashing a full maelstrom of rounds upon the hapless spy on full-automatic.

Oskar didn't have anywhere to go, and he didn't have enough time to react to the fluid situation – he just stood there, half-crouched in his 'hiding position' beside the breeched door, and took every single bullet John fired at him.

The rounds tore through his body, and sent him careening back into the corner of the room – quite obviously dead, his body having been literally ripped to shreds by the horrendous assault rifle's vicious firepower.

But John could not afford to take a breath for even a moment – he snapped himself back around to face Malden, his gun swinging around to bear on the Athosian turncoat.

The big, burly merchantman stood a little away from the triangular dais in the centre of the room, holding up a small remote-control device that Sheppard reasoned – accurately, though he could not be completely sure – was the triggering mechanism for the explosives. His forefinger hovered fleetingly over the red button that would detonate the explosives… a huge grin was plastered all over Malden's face.

"We've already won today, Colonel Sheppard – there isn't a thing you can do to stop me now. And just think, because of _your_ incompetence, Oskar and I were able to accomplish our task, and strike a blow for the people of the Pegasus Galaxy against the enemies of peace and freedom!" Malden said triumphantly.

John had the man lined up now in his gun-sights – but Sheppard didn't take a shot yet, in fear that he would not be able to take the bomber down before he could detonate his charges. The Colonel needed a clear, perfect shot.

"When did you turn traitor and join the Genii, Malden?"

"Traitor? I WAS NEVER A TRAITOR TO MY PEOPLE, SHEPPARD!" Malden roared back, at the top of his lungs. "Teyla Emmagan and the fools who've aligned themselves with her are blind to the greatness of the Genii – as are you, Colonel. You should never have challenged them in such a way. They are a great people, greater than you and yours will ever know. And _they_ are the true, rightful rulers of this entire galaxy!"

One thing was becoming quite obvious very quickly – Malden was a fanatic, and as such, was a very dangerous foe to deal with. He believed in this Genii propaganda hook, line and sinker; the only way to end this, as John dreaded, was through the use of force.

He sucked a huge amount of air down into his lungs, aimed carefully through the scope of his weapon, calmly exhaled the carbon-dioxide out again… and as he breathed out, John squeezed back ever-so-lightly on the trigger, sending three high-powered bullets out of the end of his rifle. They slammed right into the upper left portion of Malden's chest a split-second later, shattering his ribs and lungs, and tearing his heart completely out.

The Athosian dropped to his knees, the remote-control slipping out of his grasp, completely forgotten, then fell face-first onto the floor.

His ruined chest was bleeding profusely, and there was literally _litres _of blood splattered all over the place… as well as a virtual _river _of it running out of Malden's corpse.

John slid back onto the ground, and shut his eyes to the carnage all around him. Damn this whole mess… Sheppard was too tired to move, too tired to call for help, too tired to check on the explosives or do any work anymore whatsoever.

It was over for him, he'd finally had his fill – Sheppard was done.

In less than a minute, John could hear the unmistakable sound of the Scotsman, Dr Carson Beckett, wafting through his head, and he opened his eyes slightly to see the Atlantis expedition's chief medical officer crouching over him. Sheppard smiled, and he knew at last that the cavalry had arrived.

At last, it really _was _over!

# A #

_On the__edge of Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Ronon Dex swung his right fist in for a punch at the Genii soldier's chest, only to have the blow countered with a blocking move and be forced to repel a blistering counterattack. The enemy trooper came at him with chops of deadly skill and accuracy, with enough strength behind the blows to do some real damage. Most of them he was able to deflect, but a couple got through Ronon's defences and he was staggered by the impacts.

Dex didn't really expect this fighter to be as good in hand-to-hand combat as he was – he seemed to be way above his comrades in ability with this art of war. He himself was forced to rise up to another level of combativeness, if Ronon wished to defeat his foe.

The chops came down hard on Ronon Dex, but at last he managed to get his own back against the Genii – by seizing his right hand in his left hand, locking it in with a cold, vicious steel-like hold, and slamming his right fist _right into his opponent's forearm with every last ounce of strength!_

With a sickening crack, the Genii commando's arm snapped light a twig, and he crumpled over in agonizing pain. It was a devastatingly brutal move, for a fight where the victor got to live just a little longer and the loser was as good as dead – there were no half-measures in such a combat situation.

One thing that Ronon had to give begrudging respect to, was the fact that, even though tears of pain were streaming down both of the enemy fighter's cheeks, he did not cry out or scream in agony. He was in incredible pain, but he did not give into his situation or despair in any way.

With a broken arm, Dex had expected his foe to be quite a pushover – instead, with just one good arm, the man's legs came into play as deadly weapons all of their own, and he fought on with even more daring tenacity than before.

As yet another roundhouse kick found its mark, and Ronon Dex was knocked staggering backwards into a hard metal wall, he bounced back suddenly and _seized _the Genii's right foot suddenly _in midair!_

The enemy combatant could do nothing more than hop along where he stood, trying to pull back his foot from out of Ronon's grasp, with little success… the warrior was trapped.

Ronon Dex was going to end this now, while the chance presented itself. He yanked back on the leg of the Genii fighter, tugging him forward towards him, and taking the other man off-balance. As the enemy soldier tumbled forward, Ronon drove his left hand, hooked in the manner of a chopping-spade, _right into his foe's throat with all his might!_

The fighter's windpipe was crushed from the blow, and he fell to his knees struggling for breath. Dex quickly moved around behind his adversary and, without a second's pause, grabbed the man round the back of his neck. With ruthless, brutal efficiency that any true Genii would have respected, Ronon Dex snapped his enemy's neck, severing his spine in one smooth, calculated action.

Killing the great Genii trooper, Egan… one of the most promising young warriors Commander Kolya had ever encountered.

# A #

He knew it was going to be a tough ask from the outset, but Kolya had not expected to find such tough, dogged resistance when he had. Now, the numbers advantage the defenders had over the Genii boarders were playing a crucial role, and one of their number, a scraggy-haired behemoth who fought like a war-god, was leading the enemy on a counteroffensive against his force.

It was a dangerous venture to undertake, but this man was more than up to the challenge – he inspired those that fought with him with his deeds, and they were plentiful, worthy of any man's respect. The Genii troops, Kolya's very best fighters, were fearful to engage this killing machine – even with their illustrious Commander present, they feared the retribution of this seemingly invincible adversary.

When he heard that Egan had been killed, felled by the massive juggernought of a fighter that was bearing relentlessly down on his position, Commander Kolya bowed his head in sorrow. He mourned the passing of a brave young trooper, a man worthy of honour and respect.

And, as a Commander, Acastus Kolya was also forced to evaluate his force's tactical position. To put things bluntly, he could sum up their assault on the _Daedalus _with one simple word: _FAILURE_,

But there still might be a way to salvage SOMETHING out of this whole mess. Deep down, Kolya still burned for his revenge against John Sheppard – and a way to get that revenge slowly unfurled itself within the Commander's plotting, calculative mind.

# A #

They were withdrawing – Ronon noticed this even as he was shooting a fleeing Genii soldier in the side, then again in the back as he went down hard onto the floor. Making a fighting-retreat. And it made sense too, Dex thought with a smirk of self-confidence; the bastards were getting their butts handed to 'em now.

Then, Ronon Dex saw an older, slightly weary Genii soldier come striding out of a side corridor further up ahead, followed by two more troopers with what looked like one of the _Daedalus' _own crew supported between them. One of the two men had a gun to the unconscious prisoner's head.

Almost instinctually, Dex knew that he was looking into the face of Commander Acastus Kolya, the Genii troop leader who had caused so many problems for the Atlantis expedition in the past. And as they came closer, he also spotted none other than _Colonel Steven Caldwell_ being supported between the two armed Genii soldiers.

This was quite a situation to be in… Ronon ordered his personnel to cease fire, and Kolya did the same to his Genii. There was an eerie silence at last, as Ronon Dex slowly approached the Genii contingent out in the middle of this makeshift battlefield.

"You are Commander Kolya, I presume," Ronon said softly, folding his harms in front of him as a sign of intense disrespect. He wanted to convey the right message to his enemy…

"That's right… you, I don't think I've met before. Are you new to this Atlantean force?" the Commander replied. He was looking at Dex quizzically, tilting his head slightly to the side, as if looking at his opponent from a different angle would reveal some key insight.

Ronon smirked. "Yes, you could say that… now, what the hell is this all about? We have no real problems with the Genii here – we never really did in the first place, it was _YOU_ who attacked _US_ in Atlantis! You should just turn around, hop back into your Puddle Jumpers, and fly right on out of here before you _really _start to piss me off."

"Brave words, my friend, brave words…"

"Let's get one thing straight," Dex snapped back angrily, "I will NEVER be your friend, and the next time I see you, I'm blasting a hole through your head where you stand, without hesitation. So don't you forget that, okay?"

With that, the man turned to leave, but then Kolya stepped forward. Ronon's body tensed up for instant action, ready to draw his blaster and try to take down as many Genii as he could before he was killed… but then he noticed that the Commander was holding out a piece of white paper, on which was scrawled a few symbols.

Ronon took the paper, and looked at the symbols more closely – he saw instantly that they were from the Stargate, symbols of a world somewhere within the Pegasus Galaxy. He looked up at Commander Acastus Kolya.

"We know the man that we have in our possession is the commander of this vessel – a very senior officer in your military too. I propose that Major John Sheppard meet me, alone, on this planet. I promise that he will not be harmed in any way, until we meet, one on one, to battle it out to the death to see who the superior fighter _TRULY_ is!" Kolya said. "If he is able to defeat me, then my prisoner will be released to Sheppard and they can both travel safely back to Atlantis through the Stargate on this world. If not… the prisoner will stay with us, to be tortured for useful information, and John Sheppard will be dead. It's a simple arrangement, but I hope the Major accepts my challenge."

Ronon snickered. "He's not a Major anymore, Kolya. He's a Lieutenant-Colonel."

"And that's supposed to mean anything to me?" the Commander snapped back testily. "See to it that John gets the message, and understands me. We will wait on the planet for forty-eight hours, understood?"

"But how are we supposed to get back to Atlantis in time? You did a mighty fine job of taking all our electronics offline."

The Genii laughed back in Ronon's face. "Well, that just isn't my concern now, is it? John better reach this planet by the deadline, though, or you all will never see your companion here ever again!"

# A #

With that, Commander Kolya, the Genii troopers that were still alive and moving, and their prisoner Colonel Caldwell retreated back to the Puddle Jumpers, and boarded the space-vessels for immediate departure. Ronon and his armed crew followed every last Genii soldier back to their ships, under gunpoint – but no one fired on anybody. This was a tactical withdrawal.

Nobody wanted things to turn bloody again… there had already been enough death for everyone to deal with as it was.

Rodney McKay radioed to Ronon that he had short-ranged rail-gun weapons online at last, as the last Genii-operated Jumper shot off away from the _Daedalus_, but Dex told the doctor to hold fire. McKay didn't understand it – he had the Puddle Jumper _dead-centre in his sights!_

The press of a single button was all it took to slice that spacecraft to pieces.

"Rodney, the damage is done, just let them go," Ronon Dex replied with a heavy sigh. "We have to get this ship back on track as soon as possible, we have to care for our wounded, see to our dead, and get the message back to John. Atlantis is going to be in an uproar over this – we'll get our revenge over the Genii for this atrocity, but today, we have to deal with trying to get through this more or less whole!"

Dr McKay understood the logic of what he was being told, so that was why he followed Ronon's instructions and let the Jumper zoom away through the void of space.

Now that the last of the Genii had finally left them, the work slowly began to care for all the wounded personnel, the bodies of the dead were relocated to makeshift mortuaries that had been set up throughout the vessel… and the repairs began all over again in earnest, led by the ever-vigilant, focused Dr Rodney McKay.

# A #

It was the Asgard technician, Hermiod, who came up with the solution to their plight – he suggested that they get the sub-light thrusters back up and operational, and fly the severely damaged, decimated star-ship on to the nearest planet in the solar system. The planet where the Genii had launched their electronic assault from, and where the Puddle Jumpers had flown back to after their unsuccessful raid.

It took them all quite some time to get the right systems online again, and fully operational, but once they had McKay had them set an immediate course for the small planet's northern continent, where the Gate was located.

They landed on a smooth, flat open plain, right near the Stargate. The planet was completely devoid of life – Rodney assumed that the Genii forces had pulled out of there quite recently, as there were signs of their presence all over the place. Fresh footprints and tyre tracks were scattered all over the place.

McKay and a small group of engineers and Air Force command officers, as well as a squad of five Special Forces soldiers, crossed the short distance between the _Daedalus_ and the Stargate, and quickly enough established a wormhole with the city of Atlantis.

Rodney activated his I.D.C. code and, leading the way, stepped through the Gate's event-horizon. He had absolutely no idea that he was just about to cross from one confused, critical situation, and right into another…

# A #

_The city of Atlantis,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

The debriefing was conducted in the city's well-established medical bay, where Lt Colonel John Sheppard was under the constant, professional care of Dr Beckett and his assistants. John _was not_ going to let himself get cut out of the loop – but Carson Beckett _was not_ about to let his wounded patient out of his sight, for a single moment…

So the meeting was being held at Sheppard's bedside.

Ronon Dex, Dr Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagan, Dr Elizabeth Weir, John Sheppard… they were all there, finally together again to relay their own personal portions of the entire, intricate web. What became instantly clear to everyone, once the outlines of all the events came into focus, was just how well-planned and –coordinated the Genii operations against them had been, over two separate fronts.

They had worked this out quite carefully, and Kolya's forces had carried things through to completion with skilled professionalism. By the time everyone had laid out their own stories about what had transpired over the last few days, the picture became crystal clear – Kolya had struck back at them with a murderous vengeance, and he had come away bloodied but victorious, in a certain manner of speaking.

Although it had been clear that the Genii force's grand prize had been the capturing of the _Daedalus_ – which they had failed to accomplish – Kolya's forces had still managed to come away with a hostage. One Colonel Steven Caldwell.

Lt Colonel John Sheppard was not about to let that stand, though. He knew that Acastus Kolya was one cold, ruthless bastard, and that this _entire_ operation was nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to take him down. The challenge that he had told Ronon about onboard the battle-cruiser before the Genii had withdrawn from the fight was just confirmation…

And John was going to take up the fight, _wounded shoulder and all!_

"I want to go to this planet," Sheppard said finally, when talk turned to Kolya's challenge at the very end of the meeting. "This situation with the Genii Commander has got to come to an end. We can't keep exploring the galaxy, knowing that somewhere out there, a brilliant military strategist hell-bent on destroying us all is out there, forever plotting new ways to hurt us. I promised the fool that if he ever did something like this again, I would kill him – and by God, I plan to keep that promise!"

There were stringent protests – he was injured, they didn't know the planet, it could be one big trap to get Sheppard off-world and then kill him straight away without mercy – but John would have nothing of it. He had made up his mind and that was that, there were no other alternatives as far as the Colonel was concerned.

Deep down inside them all, Ronon, Rodney, Teyla and Elizabeth all knew that he was right, that this was the way their war with Kolya had to conclude – but no one could bring themselves to admit it openly.

Carson was positively incensed when he learned… but he could do little to dissuade Sheppard, and Dr Weir would not back his motion to have the Colonel forcibly held back in the infirmary The rest of John Sheppard's team made their preparations – they would _ALL _be going to this planet, to back their leader up in case this was going to get ugly.

It was time to end this. It was time for Sheppard and Kolya to settle their differences, one-on-one, to the death…


	10. Chapter Nine & Epilogue

**CHAPTER NINE **

_The planet Cellos,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

Much of the world known to the Genii as Cellos was covered in churning, freezing waters – there was little in the way of land mass, save for a small island in the northern hemisphere upon which the Stargate was located, and a number of tiny rocky ridges that were scattered across the ocean-world's surface to the extreme south.

For much of the year, the world was cold and dark, and little in the way of plant or animal life existed anywhere; save for a some huge, thick green foliage that was able to retain the little amount of sunlight the planet got for an incredibly long length of time, and some of the strangest, most deadly insect-like creatures the Genii had ever encountered…

It was a miserable, unhabitable planet – no one had even _tried _to live there in over fifty years. So it was the perfect place, in Commander Acastus Kolya's calculating mind, for the final showdown between himself and John Sheppard.

Kolya looked over at the hostage they had taken – a man who had revealed his identity to be Colonel Steven Caldwell, commander of the battle-cruiser _Daedalus_, serial number 5502894. Caldwell promised them that he would tell the Genii no more – and the steel-eyed determination that shone out of his steady gaze led credence to his bravado.

But the man was not there for the Genii to interrogate – well, at least not yet. No, he was simply bait, to make sure that Sheppard would come to the planet and face Kolya, to finally put an end to this saga once and for all.

Acastus was dressed in the full combat uniform of a Genii Commander; with the tight-fitting cap, the military garb of an officer, the leather belt and holster… no auto-gun this time, as Kolya had absolutely no intention of using one.

He was clutching a long-bladed dagger in one hand, and was clenching and unclenching his other hand into a fist… ready for combat, waiting for Sheppard to arrive so the battle could begin.

There was nobody else visible throughout the desolate environment… just Kolya, standing right out in the open, and Caldwell, tied up tightly by his hands and feet, sitting on the ground by a large, twisted-looking old tree-stump off to the side.

# A #

"Well, I cannot see any other Genii besides Commander Kolya," Teyla Emmagan said, after having peered down the telescopic sights of a high-powered, G36C Elite sniper rifle, and carefully checking the terrain all around the supposed 'fight zone' way out ahead of them. "I think he is waiting for you alone…"

Lt Colonel Sheppard nodded absently. He really hadn't expected Acastus Kolya to bring any force in support – the Genii obviously wanted to settle this score just as much as John himself did.

There was too much hatred between them to let this slide by… and _far_ too much at stake, for both parties, for that to be satisfactory.

"Are you sure about this, Sheppard?" Ronon asked, in a low growl. He had met the Genii for the first time up in space, onboard the _Daedalus_, and they had not made a good impression in his mind…

"No, Ronon, I'm not… but I have to do this. It's the only way this is going to end," Sheppard replied honestly.

He looked around at the members of his team, all of whom were crouched low to the ground just like John himself was, trying not be make themselves seem too obvious to any possible observers or lookouts. At Ronon Dex, the big, burly fighting man; at Teyla Emmagan, the shorter, lithe Athosian leader; and at Dr Rodney McKay, the overconfident, egotistical scientific genius – this was his team.

And now, they were all here in support – even McKay, who looked positively scared out of his mind.

John looked further ahead of the group, towards the Genii warrior standing out there on his own, waiting… his heart was racing away inside his chest, and he couldn't stop clenching and unclenching his fists – Sheppard was itching for a fight. He had to go, had to finish this – right there and then.

Although he had a bullet wound to the right shoulder, John Sheppard was feeling pretty much 100 fit and healthy, ready to go – thanks to the strong painkillers Dr Carson Beckett had injected around the wound, along with a steroid tablet he had taken which was _really_ starting to kick in.

Coming down was going to be real tough… but Sheppard was not looking that far ahead. No, his focus was set squarely on one thing, on one person.

"Stay here, all of you – keep your eyes and ears open for anything out of the ordinary, but _don't_ act unless you have to…" the Colonel ordered. He glanced around at the other three, and saw each of them nod in turn that they understood the situation. "This will end when Kolya's dead!"

# A #

John Sheppard walked slowly down the open field that stretched out in front of the Stargate on this world… he kept walking, with his eyes set forward with cold, unwavering determination. It was time for the showdown…

He was unarmed – Sheppard did not know if Kolya was, also, and did not even know if he was _meant_ to be unarmed, but he took the chance because he thought he understood his foe's proud, honour-bound psyche.

It was strangely twisted in many ways, yes, but deep down Commander Kolya _believed _in his own personal cause – he was a fanatic, and as such, was willing to do viciously brutal acts of violence and treachery to see that his aims were met.

But now, that was all going to end… because Lt Colonel Sheppard would not be leaving this world until Commander Acastus Kolya was dead.

"Major Sheppard, it's good to see you again!" Kolya's voice boomed out, and the Genii snickered almost derisively. "I must say, I did not really expect it. I wonder, how did you fair against my two insurgents? Oskar is one of the most competent Genii operatives we have…"

"I wouldn't really call him all that _competent_, myself – the man got himself killed, after all," Sheppard replied coldly. "And it's Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard now, not Major – I was promoted."

"Well then, _Lieutenant Colonel_…" Kolya scoffed, "are you ready to die?"

John Sheppard smiled back at the Genii, and then turned his head slightly to the side. "I was just about to ask you the same thing, Kolya."

The look of superior confidence flittered across his face for just a moment… then began to fade. Acastus moved to his side with sharp, angry motions, snatching up a long-bladed weapon from out of a scabbard halfway down his right calf, and threw it hard at the ground right at John's feet.

The sharp dagger sliced through the ground, til it was sticking up in the air, handle-first. Sheppard looked at Kolya, and saw for the first time that the Genii was holding a bladed weapon of his own, _and was beginning to move in on him right at that moment!_

And so, the fighting began…

# A #

"What's happening over there? Is Sheppard alright?" Rodney McKay demanded. He was nervously wringing his hands, looking around the place for the slightest hint of danger. The _Daedalus _incident had sapped away what little strength and courage that he had – now, all Rodney wanted was to get back to Atlantis, to return to some semblance of normalcy, and try to get everything back on track again.

"It's begun, Rodney," Teyla Emmagan replied curtly, staring down the sights of her high-powered rifle. No matter what, she had been told implicitly by John _NOT_ to intervene on his behalf. That might just prove to be a very tough call, but she knew what this was about between the two fighters, and understood the score that had to be settled… Teyla would follow Sheppard's instructions, and keep out of their personal conflict.

Neither McKay nor Ronon Dex said anything, as they both tried to see as much as they could of the battle with their naked eyes – Teyla got a much clearer picture of the knife conflict through her telescopic sights, and what she saw did not fill her with much in the way of confidence.

# A #

Sheppard raced forward to snatch up the dagger that was sticking out of the ground at his feet… only to have to duck aside at the very last moment to avoid a swipe Kolya made for his throat! The blade sliced past through the air,_ barely missing his neck by a mere whisker!_

Rolling out of the way as Acastus moved in for a brutal kick to the side of John's ribs, the Colonel took the blow to the guts with a painful groan but still kept moving along the ground, til he came bounding up onto his feet with a fluid jump, his own blade whipping out to almost catch Kolya across the side of his face as he came rushing forward.

The Genii managed to pull himself up at the last moment – avoiding having the first blood drawn in the knife-fight by but a split-second.

Both combatants were quick-thinkers, and were obviously quite evenly matched opponents for one another. Acastus Kolya's eyes burned with incessant rage as he moved in for the kill, rolling on the backs of his heels as he strode purposefully in towards John Sheppard…

The Genii spun to the right side at the last moment, as John swept his knife-arm out first for a pre-emptive lunge forward. The move caught Sheppard off-guard, and Kolya was able to get in low and fast upon John's suddenly-exposed midsection – as he darted past the military-man from Earth, Kolya was able to slash out across his opponent's side with his sharp-bladed dagger, cutting a deep gash into John's body.

When Commander Acastus Kolya darted away from Sheppard's late slashing attempt to strike him, he left his younger foe reeling from a deep, bloody gash to his lower left side. John looked down at the wound, saw the copious amount of blood that was pouring out of the fresh gash, and quickly jammed his spare hand up against it, trying desperately to keep the slash closed over as much as possible so he didn't bleed out.

Sheppard silently cursed his momentary slip in concentration – this was no rookie he was dealing with! And Kolya had made him pay dearly for that small mistake…

This was a life-and-death battle – there couldn't be _any_ mistakes!

Kolya moved in smoothly again, slicing out with his knife first directly for John's face, and then quickly shifting direction, striking down into his left shoulder before the Colonel even realized it!

The blade sunk deep into John's shoulder, til it scraped up against bone, and he cried out in absolute agony. But still, the sharp, intense pain of the wound helped suddenly to sharpen the fighter's focus, and Sheppard was able to battle through the initially crippling blow to strike out immediately against his adversary!

Acastus was not expecting, after having gotten Sheppard with two very solid strikes of the blade in a matter of seconds, for him to launch a blistering attack back at him straight away, but that's what John managed to do… _with Kolya's knife still sticking out of his left shoulder!_

With vicious slashes and jabs coming from all directions, John drove Kolya back about ten feet, watching carefully as Acastus managed to duck and weave away or under every one of his attacks… until, at last, he began to get the measure of his man.

Kolya was on the defensive, without a weapon as it was still sticking out of John Sheppard… and he was beginning to panic. Sheppard suddenly went low, very low, and cut out for the side of Kolya's left leg. The dagger found its mark and slid right into the Genii fighter's left thigh, almost up to the hilt. Acastus let out a painful scream and almost immediately dropped down onto his right knee on the ground.

Without further ado, with his own dagger jammed right into his enemy's leg and Kolya's weapon still buried in his own left shoulder, John started laying into Acastus with right and left punches, smashing his fists one-two into his foe's face, with all his might behind each and every blow. When his nose was busted from one of Sheppard's punches, and blood started to pour out of it at a great rate, Kolya's lips twisted into a sneering parlay of a smile, and he launched himself bodily straight at John…

It was a last-ditched move; a desperate attempt to shift the fight back in the Genii's favour. John saw it coming, could see by the way Kolya shifted his body-mass at the last moment before leaping up at him just what he was planning to do – so he moved to the side at the last instant, _and struck out hard at Acastus' stomach as he went on by with his right boot!_

The kick to Kolya's guts was perfect – the Genii Commander took the full impact, and immediately dropped down to both knees, completely winded. His face was all puffy, covered in sweat, and his eyes were bulging out of their sockets in strain. John walked slowly up to the fallen warrior from behind.

Now Sheppard was unarmed, with his own dagger still protruding from Kolya's thigh, but he had the Genii's own knife sticking out of his left shoulder so he still had a weapon _at hand_, if necessary… in a manner of speaking, at least.

But he did not want to end this with a weapon – not if he didn't have to, at least.

Lt Colonel Sheppard wrenched the military cap off Commander Kolya's head, and grabbed hold of a thick handful of his dark brown hair, yanking the older man's head back savagely so his foe was looking back at him right in the eyes. John had Kolya's head bent back at a severe angle behind him, but he hardly cared in the least for the Genii's discomfort, not after all that had passed between them…

"I warned you that if you ever tried anything against me and my people again, that I'd kill you, Kolya!" Sheppard roared. "You just had to test me out at this, didn't you? You couldn't just let it all pass…"

"No, John, I couldn't!" Kolya shouted back. "Would _YOU_ have let it go if I had been the one to triumph, back in Atlantis when we met for the first time? Or if I'd managed to take the ZPM you and your team were so desperately pursuing? I don't think so – it's about pride, Sheppard! Pride and arrogance! Now, just finish this…!"

With a vicious tug back, John Sheppard had Kolya's head locked in a tight vice in his right arm, began to twist his foe's head around to the side, to yank it back brutally and snap his neck… when suddenly, Acastus _reached up with his right hand and took hold of the dagger, still sticking straight out of John's shoulder!_

The agony of it when Kolya jammed the weapon deeper into Sheppard's wound was intense, almost overwhelming… John had to really struggle to fight unconsciousness – as he knew instantly that if he gave in and let the darkness overwhelm him, he would be as good as dead, at the mercy of the Genii Commander. Then, Acastus yanked the knife _right out_ of John's left shoulder.

Though there was another agonizing bout of pain to ride through, Sheppard at least was able to grit his teeth and bear this suffering a little easier. But now, he was faced with a somewhat reenergized, reinvigorated Commander Kolya, with one knife in his grasp, _and the other sticking out of his leg!_

He had been so close to ending it all… but John knew he would have found it hard to live with himself afterwards, killing a man so callously like that, snapping their neck in such a brutal manner – even if it was Commander Kolya.

This at least, though it was far more dangerous, made it a fight, and would take away much of the guilt that came with an enemy kill.

Commander Kolya yanked the knife that was sticking out of his leg straight out – he let out a sharp gasp of pain, but quickly put that to the back of his mind as his eyes focused intently on Sheppard. He rose up to his feet and moved quickly in for the kill…

With one smooth, skilful counterattack, it was over in a matter of seconds.

Acastus Kolya moved quickly in, with his knife darting straight into Sheppard's exposed chest, but John suddenly twisted sharply to the right, and snatched hold of the Genii soldier's wrist as he manoeuvred himself out of immediate danger. Now, clutching hold of Kolya's dagger-hand by the other man's wrist, John twisted his opponent's hand viciously to the right… until the sound of the Genii's wrist-bones being snapped became quite audible, and he screamed out in savage agony.

Sheppard did not hesitate – he simply forced Kolya's own arm back around, with the dagger and his now-limp hand, _and drove Acastus' own knife back into his throat!_

The point of the bladed weapon made contact with Kolya's jugular, punctured it, and slid right on through til it hit bone, wedged _deeply _in the Genii's throat. His eyes bulged open and blood began to pour down out of the gaping wound in his neck… Kolya knew he was deeply wounded and was in serious trouble, John could tell by the look of bewilderment and horror that glittered in the Genii's usually cold, dark eyes.

Lt Colonel Sheppard twisted the dagger into Kolya's neck harder, and then let go of the weapon, leaving the Genii standing up on his own two feet for a few long moments. Kolya staggered about on his feet slightly, wheezing heavily as he struggled to breathe through his shattered windpipe, with the knife now sticking out of the front of his neck…

Then he fell down hard onto his hands and knees, succumbing at last to his taxing wounds… Kolya's eyes were bulging wide open in dread, as he tried desperately to breathe, to suck more air down into his burning, screaming lungs…

But he could not breathe. The dagger was in the way, had sliced straight through his windpipe, and Kolya was bleeding out heavily… blood was soaking into his tunic, was leaking down his body and onto the ground. The Genii Commander was a dead man, and he was also intelligent enough to realize it.

As he sat there dying, half-slouched over as he was on his knees before his enemy, Kolya made a last, final effort to look up at Colonel Sheppard – to behold the face of the man who had killed him.

John looked back down on Commander Acastus Kolya. He too was badly wounded, but he had fought better when it counted, and never once let his dire predicament overwhelm him. John was able to take advantage of small opportunities when they presented themselves, and that, above everything else, was the reason why he was standing there at that moment, looking down on his deadly foe… the victor.

"Goodbye, Kolya," he said softly to his Genii adversary.

With those final words, he pulled the dagger out of the other man's ruined throat with a vicious tug, and threw the weapon aside, onto the ground far enough away to be out of reach of his foe.

Kolya sat up there on his knees for a couple more seconds, wheezing deeply, trying desperately now to breathe… and then he fell over hard onto the ground, on his right side, and inside of a minute the Genii Commander was dead.

He had bled out over the grassy ground, from the fatal wound to his neck.

John, in agonizing pain all over himself, crouched down over his foe and closed the dead man's eyelids over. It was finally done with…

But then a noise over near a motley collection of old tree-trunks made Sheppard look up… and he saw, much to his horror and disbelief, a group of Genii emerge from hiding, their rifles raised and expressions of murderous fury plastered all over their faces.

They were less than fifty yards away from him… Sheppard glanced over at Colonel Caldwell, tied up with ropes the way he was nearby, and made his choice – he had to go for the Colonel, there really was no other alternative.

When the Genii-controlled Puddle Jumpers uncloaked in low orbit overhead, all five of them, Lt Colonel John Sheppard didn't even pause to look at them – from the moment he saw the Genii troops emerging from the tree-line, he knew things had just gone to hell, to the Jumpers were hardly a surprise at all…

# A #

What _WAS _a surprise, to everyone on the planet, – _especially_ John Sheppard – was when the first Genii Puddle Jumper to uncloak suddenly exploded in a massive, intensely-bright ball of flames, _after being struck from above by an Ancient-designed drone weapon!_

"Need any assistance, John?" a warm, familiar voice asked over the team's encrypted radio channel – it was _Dr Elizabeth Weir!_

"Elizabeth! Damn, I'm I glad to hear your voice!" John Sheppard exclaimed, when he thumbed the radio 'TALK' button. He had not stopped running over to where Colonel Caldwell was bound up, after snatching up one of the two bloodied knives along the way. "Excellent timing, too!"

"Yes, well I couldn't just let my chief military officer go wandering off through the Stargate, into what could easily be a major trap, without all the backup I could provide!" Elizabeth said with a light chuckle. "Now, let me and your people give you the air-cover you need – get Caldwell, get your team and get back to the Stargate!"

"You got it!"

Another Jumper exploded, really close by – the wreckage plummeted into the ground barely a couple of hundred yards away, tearing through the thick bushland, and scattering flames and debris all over the place. Chalk up another kill to Weir and her Atlantean Jumpers…

John looked quickly up at the sky overhead – and immediately grinned broadly. Dr Weir had managed to get no less than _eight_ Puddle Jumpers to this planet – and had positioned them in a higher orbit than the Genii Jumpers.

When the Genii had revealed themselves, the Atlantean Jumpers had been in a vastly superior position than their enemies – now they were down to three, and the Jumpers were only now managing to turn their ships around and engage this new threat in dog-fighting manoeuvres!

Quickly, back to the situation at hand… John reached Colonel Caldwell at last. He hurriedly told the Colonel that everything was going to be all right, that Kolya was dead and the _Daedalus _was back at Atlantis being repaired, and then went about cutting through his bonds so that he could pull Caldwell up onto his feet.

But then, a shadow through the trees off to the right made Sheppard pause, and turn…

A female Genii soldier stepped forward, from out behind a tree-trunk, clutching an auto-gun. At that range, both Caldwell and John would be cut to pieces as soon as she squeezed back far enough on the trigger – there was nowhere they could go, nothing either one of them could do.

The woman – John didn't know it, but he was looking into the enraged face of Venetia, Commander Kolya's trusted technician and expert on advanced technologies – was gripping the weapon very tightly in her right hand, and looked about ready to fire it right at them both…

Sheppard braced himself for the impact to come, and for death.

# A #

But the gunfire never did come. The Lt Colonel opened his eyes at the last moment… and saw, much to his surprise, the woman's head snap back sharply _as she was struck by a high-powered sniper rifle round! _

Teyla Emmagan had come through for him, and at the very last moment too! The shot had to have come from a mile away, very close to the Stargate… the team must have been moving back towards the Gate. But Teyla had kept her eye out, and had come through to make the shot when it was needed.

Now though, they couldn't just stand around and wait for more Genii to make their move on them – _they had to keep moving!_

"Come on, Colonel!" John encouraged. "We have to keep going!"

The tree-line was now positively _swarming_ with Genii – they surged forward _en masse_, their combined fury focused squarely upon John Sheppard and Steven Caldwell. "Teyla, we sure could use a guardian angel right about now…" John muttered to himself, as he and Caldwell ran for all they were worth back towards the Gate, and safety.

# A #

Overhead, the battle raged on as the three Genii-piloted Jumpers that remained tried their best to duel with the Atlanteans.

Dr Elizabeth Weir sat in the co-pilot's chair as one of the new members of the expedition, Lieutenant Ron Schroeder, took the Puddle Jumper into a steep, sharp-banking left turn, right on the tail of a Genii Jumper. He was an African-American, a Marine pilot who was still getting a handle on some of the incredible technologies that were at the disposal of the Atlantis expedition – but Ron happened to be one of the most naturally-brilliant Puddle Jumper pilots Elizabeth had ever seen.

The Lieutenant, with only a simple thought, activated the drone weapons capacity, locked onto the targeted Jumper, and fired a pair of drones right at the enemy-controlled spacecraft, in an incredibly tight turn that few pilots would have been able to carry off.

The lead drone weapon shrieked in through the distance between the two Jumpers, and struck the targeted vessel in the right side, tearing through the engine manifolds and shearing a vicious pathway of destruction straight through the entire length of the craft. As the Jumper began to drop out of the sky and plummet towards the ground, the second drone slammed into the rear of the spacecraft… _and completely obliterated it!_

Schroeder was able to pull their Jumper quite easily out of their descent, and guide their craft straight back into the fight… though now, it was blatantly obvious to the Genii in the Puddle Jumpers that they had _ZERO_ percent chance against _eight_ Atlantean Jumpers, piloted by far more experienced aviators then themselves.

So, they tried to bug out of the fight – they tried to retreat into the upper atmosphere, then out into the dark void of space itself.

Weir was not going to have any of that – which was why five of the Jumpers were sent off in pursuit, and they managed to catch up to and take down one of the Genii vessels.

The last Genii Jumper, prudently, immediately slowed down instead of making its suicidal run on the upper atmosphere, and powered down their thrusters… they were surrendering. Two Atlantean Jumpers moved up to flank both sides of the Genii spacecraft and, contacting the Genii on their own radio frequency, told them to land on the other side of the Stargate, away from their own massing forces.

The Genii Jumper did exactly as it was bidden to, its occupants knowing that any deviation away from what they were told to do would result in _instant_ destruction.

And Weir and Schroeder in their own Puddle Jumper, along with the other five available Atlantean Jumpers, were freed up to begin to sweep down upon the Genii ground forces – in direct support of the two fleeing military officers making a mad dash for the Stargate.

As soon as the Atlantean Jumpers began to bring their full firepower to bear upon the Genii ground forces, it was pretty much decided. The Genii Strike Force hardly stood a chance…

# A #

John Sheppard and Steven Caldwell were being pursued by a pair of Genii ATVs – weapons-fire from the rear gunners of both vehicles were striking the ground all around them both, zipping through the air all around both fleeing men… when suddenly, _both of the Genii attack vehicles exploded when they were struck by a couple of drone weapons!_

The burning wreckage of both ATVs were launched high into the sky, and flipped end over end through the air before they came crashing back down hard onto the ground, further on ahead from where they had been struck – burning and in flames, all twisted and shattered remnants of their former selves.

The rest of the ATVs were further back, with most of the ground forces – getting bombarded from the sky by the airborne Puddle Jumpers acting in support of their withdrawal from the planet. But the Genii troops that were getting too close to Caldwell and Sheppard _were_ proving to be an issue.

Teyla Emmagan was picking off Genii warriors from a distance with her sniper rifle, taking them down one after another as John and Caldwell raced back towards them. As the two men got closer, and the Genii right behind them came within range, Ronon Dex began adding his own firepower to the mix, blasting away at the enemy with his own unique laser-pistol.

They were dropping the enemy troopers left and right… but still, the Genii kept on coming.

McKay was already at the Stargate's D.H.D. (dial home device), punching in the symbols of the city of Atlantis – he was finding it _extremely _difficult to work under the battlefield conditions that he found himself in, with bullets whizzing by all around him, and devastating explosions rocking the very ground he was standing on.

Rodney was crouched down quite low, but had to pop his head up entirely too far for his liking to make sure that he was hitting the right symbols – there was a lock, the Gate's event-horizon did its regular blowback, and then McKay was up and racing towards safety, escape…

"Come on you guys, time to go!" he shouted back over his shoulder. Dr McKay punched in his own I.D.C. code well before reaching the active Gate, then turned around to check on everyone else, to see that he was not the only one making a beeline back towards the Stargate, and to Atlantis… he _tried_ not to look too cowardly, whenever possible.

Sheppard helped Colonel Caldwell hustle on up to the Stargate, and once he was through the event-horizon with McKay, turned back to Teyla and Ronon.

They were both taking shots now and then at Genii that were still rushing towards them, but the fervour of their enemy's attack was now well and truly gone… thanks in large part to the intense Jumper bombings against their assault force.

As the six combat-active Jumpers hovered in low-orbit around the battleground, the Genii began to drop their weapons onto the ground and raise their hands in surrender in large numbers. In fact, not one single fighter that was still left standing kept their guns or bladed weapons – they were all sick of the bloodshed, and were now _well_ aware just how outgunned they truly were by the Atlantis force.

John smiled broadly. He looked over at Teyla and Ronon, and saw that both of them were grinning from ear to ear, as well. At last… it was over…

"Well then… Elizabeth, it seems that we all owe you our thanks!" Lt Colonel Sheppard said, using the handheld radio. "I never expected help like this, and you sure had impeccable timing… but this day sure would have turned out differently if your Jumpers weren't flying shotgun for us!"

"Anytime, John," came Dr Weir's relieved voice. "I'm glad you're all alright…"

# A #

**EPILOGUE**

_The city of Atlantis,  
the Pegasus Galaxy._

"So, how exactly _did_ you all manage to get to this rendezvous planet, _without_ activating the Stargate on that world?" John Sheppard asked a very smug-looking Elizabeth Weir. He was sitting in the briefing room of the Ancients' great city-ship, Atlantis, surrounded by the rest of his team and the senior staff of the great expeditionary force.

John was heavily bandaged from the three severe wounds he had battled through, but a few days previously, and was still in a great deal of pain from his injuries… though the pain was numbed considerably thanks to Dr Beckett and some mild painkillers.

"Well, that was a little stroke of genius from Dr Zelenka here…" Elizabeth said with a slight smile, indicating the quirky, sometimes quite nervous scientist from the Czech Republic who was sitting over near the corner of the briefing room.

Dr Radek Zelenka seemed somewhat surprised that somebody had spoken his name, and he gave a startled cry out as he jumped a little out of his seat. Then, quickly regathering himself, the scientist explained, "Well, Colonel, it was quite easy, using the Ancient database in Atlantis' computer records, to extrapolate a Gate address of a planet relatively close to the world whose Gate address the Genii had given us, as the meeting-point. IF that indeed would be the world where the meet would occur, we could have Jumpers overhead, flying at maximum speed from the nearest planet with an active Stargate, in less than 30 minutes. Dr Weir had eight Jumpers deployed immediately, with herself in personal command of the force."

John Sheppard was impressed, with both the smart thinking of Zelenka, and the bravery and instant decision-making of Elizabeth Weir. There were definitely times as commander of the Atlantis expedition when she outshone herself…

Sheppard turned his attention now to a slightly shaken-up, still unnerved Colonel Caldwell. His command ship, the _USS Daedalus_, was receiving parts and overhaul repairs done to nearly every function onboard the vessel – it would be down for a month at least, and that was an optimistic view of the situation. In anyone's books, the vessel was damn well lucky to make it back to Atlantis in the first place, considering the hell it had been through from the Genii attack.

"Colonel, what's the situation on the _Daedalus_?" he asked, just to get everything out in the open, verbalized so that everyone understood the gravity of it's damage.

"Look, we are very lucky that the battle-cruiser wasn't _destroyed_ in that initial drone attack," Caldwell began. "I've lost my entire flight deck, with every single X-302 and their logistics, as well as much of the sections surrounding that facility. Nearly every single electronics device needs a complete overhaul and replacement parts. There are twenty-seven breaches in the vessel's hull in total; seventeen of which are severe and mean that the environment of space can leak into various sections of my ship. And forty-six personnel onboard the _Daedalus _were killed in the Genii assault."

That was a very bad tally for the Colonel – and to add to everything else, his harrowing experience as a brief prisoner of war to the Genii Commander, Kolya. John Sheppard did not even want to _begin_ to imagine what Caldwell was going through, both mentally and emotionally, at that moment.

"And what of the Genii prisoners we captured?" Teyla Emmagan enquired, curious. "I heard that they had been sent through the Stargate… they were not released so soon after capture, were they?"

"No Teyla, not in the way you are thinking…" Dr Weir replied. Then she looked over at John Sheppard. This aspect of events, John knew, still didn't sit very well with her, and he could understand that because he knew what kind of person she was on the inside… a good person, who found some of the grittier aspects of her new job hard to deal with. So he took over the explanations.

"We made a trade – the Genii that were operating with Commander Kolya were in fact meant to originally bring him in, as Kolya was supposedly a traitor against the Genii rulership. But the Strike Force switched sides, and joined with the renegade Commander," John said. "So, we made a trade – a goodwill swap, of sorts. The Genii leadership got those that remained of their traitor force back, and we in return were able to work out a temporary treaty between the Genii homeworld and Atlantis – in the hopes that the peace between us would last, and it can evolve into a permanent treaty."

"That's… good news," Teyla said, but the look of confusion, and not a little concern as well, was quite clear for all to see all over her face. She was obviously wondering just what kind of environment they had sent the 'traitor' Genii back into – just what kind of punishment they were likely to be given.

John truly did not care, because the trade had been worthwhile for them all – the Genii as a collective, at least for the time being, could be considered as a 'neutral ally' and not as a danger to them. He doubted their immense differences could be settled with a document and an agreement between a couple of leaders, but then, if it kept the peace between both sides at least for a little while, then it was worth it… right?

There was one thing that their new Genii 'allies' were not aware of – and most of the people in the briefing room were also in the dark about, at least for the time being (save of course for Sheppard, Colonel Caldwell as ranking military officer, and Dr Elizabeth Weir).

And that was, that Kolya's chief scientific mind, the man who had managed to activate the ancient Wraith EMP weapon AND had figured out the secret to the Ancient gene necessary to use much of their technology, including FLYING the Puddle Jumpers – _had agreed to defect to Atlantis in exchange for sanctuary from the Genii authorities!_

He had been in the sole surviving Genii Puddle Jumper – and had thrown himself at the mercy of the Atlantean explorers from the moment he learnt of the rest of his comrades' fate, to be shipped back to their homeworld as disgraced, defeated traitors…

The old Genii technician, by the name of Kayne, who seemed on the verge of death's door and probably posed little in the way of a 'physical' security risk, – but could easily do _nightmarish_ things to the city, via technological sabotage – was under _stringent _round-the-clock guard, with no less than six heavily-armed Special Forces sentries watching over him at all times.

They were not about to risk the same Genii infiltration assault, an attack from within that had _almost_ worked the first time round, happening again. The officers in charge of each watch were given very lenient rules of engagement with Kayne… if they even _considered _that the Genii was posing even the slightest risk of escape, or was doing something that could be considered dangerous, then they were to open fire _immediately!_

Out of all the death, destruction, turmoil and suffering, at least one pleasant point could be made from all this, the Lt Colonel thought ruefully to himself – Commander Acastus Kolya was finally dead and buried, both figuratively and literally.

And to John Sheppard, it couldn't have come a moment too soon…

_THE END_


End file.
